Unintentional
by Exia
Summary: He never intended to love her. But then again, lots of things went out the window when he met Rose Tyler.
1. Prologue

_He never raised his voice. That was the worst thing. The fury of a Time Lord…and we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons – why he had run away from us and hidden._

_He was being kind._

_He wrapped my father in unbreakable chains forged in the heart of a dwarf star. He tricked my mother into the Event Horizon of a collapsing galaxy. To be imprisoned there…forever._

_He still visits my sister. Once a year, every year. I wonder if he might one day forgive her… but there she is. Can you see? He trapped her inside a mirror._

_Every mirror._

_If you ever look at your reflection and see something move behind you, just for a second – that's her. That's _always_ her. _

_As for me, I was suspended in time, and the Doctor put me to work standing over the fields of England as their protector._

_We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure we did._

ooOO00OOoo_  
_

The Doctor finished putting in the last of the coordinates and pulled the lever, sending them spinning back into the vortex. He stood there for a long moment, staring unseeing into the time rotor as it flexed up and down. He was so silent and still. There was no evidence of the overwhelming fury that burned at the center of his being. Martha thought she'd never seen him look more alien.

"What happened to them?" she asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.

"Hmm?" The Doctor's eyes flicked over to her, and they held nothing but polite, empty curiosity.

Martha shivered. "The Family. What happened to them?" Her voiced dropped to just over a whisper at the end, half-hoping that he wouldn't hear her. His face – did she really want to know?

"Nothing." He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets and stared at her with unfathomable eyes.

She blinked. "Nothing?"

He turned away and disappeared down the hallways of the TARDIS with calm, measured steps. His voice came floating back at her out of the gloom of a darkened arch. "Nothing at all."

Somehow, she knew that he'd answered her question.

Author's Note: The first part of this is, of course, a quote taken directly from the show.


	2. Chapter 1

Author's Note: This begins the meat of the story. A few things you should know going in.

1)The Author has seen only up to the end of season six of new who. That means that anything after that has not been incorporated into the story.

2)Because of point one, this story is technically AU. (Though, if we're being REALLY technical, then isn't every fanfic AU?)

3)The lovely BubblyGal92 has agreed to beta for me. You're a doll!

4)This story will be updated once a week until it is finished. Don't expect such treatment in the future. You're getting spoiled here. *wink* Enjoy!

ooOO00OOoo

They didn't go anywhere for a week. She only saw the Doctor at mealtimes, and then he was as happy and carefree as always. There was no evidence that he was faking his emotions. No hitch in his breathing, no downcast eyes or shadows across his face. No evidence that the woman he'd loved had rejected him. Nurse Redfern. Who had loved John Smith the man, but couldn't love the Doctor, the Time Lord.

His reaction to her refusal frightened Martha. He was just as unreachable when he was happy as he was when he went cold. Perhaps there was no difference. At the end of the week, she gathered her courage and asked to go home.

"Just for a couple of hours," she assured him with an earnest expression. "I just want to get some things together if I'm going to keep traveling with you."

"Of course, Martha Jones! Whatever you want," he said, big smile intact. "What time do you want me to come back?"

"You're…not going to stay?" Cautious. Wary of him, like a wounded animal.

"Nah," he leaned against the console with a casual air. "Don't really go in for families. Too domestic."

"But you'll come back, right?" She had to make sure.

"Yeah! Of course."

She stared at him for a long moment, trying to gauge his sincerity. He bore her inspection with amused stoicism.

"All right," she said reluctantly. "Give me five hours and I'll be ready to go."

"Five and a half."

ooOO00OOoo

The doors had barely closed behind Martha when the Doctor sent the TARDIS hurtling back into the Vortex almost violently. He loved the Earth, of course he did. He wouldn't have spent so much time there, extended so much effort to keep it healthy and whole and moving down its most prosperous timeline if he didn't. It wasn't just the humans – though they were brilliant. And it wasn't one of the some two dozen other species that had evolutionary beginnings on that planet. Though those were rather brilliant, too. It wasn't even its green grass, or blue sky, or soaring mountains. Or great works of art. No, it wasn't any of those things in particular. It was some mix of all those that, when added all together, somehow added up to more than the sum of its parts. But right now, all its people and beauty and grandeur weren't enough to convince him to set foot upon it anytime soon. Because while Earth had done all those things, it had also done something else. It had given him _her_.

And then taken her away.

The Doctor spared a thought for Martha, waiting patiently back in her apartment, and felt a twinge of guilt for manipulating her. He'd known that she would eventually ask him to go back to Earth. That keeping her locked up in the TARDIS while simultaneously denying her his company would drive her home – if only for a short while. He'd known that, and he'd used it. He _was_ going back for her. Five and a half hours – for her – would find him parked in her living room, smug as can be.

But it would be considerably longer than that for him.

He'd lost so much recently. Rose, due to her own stubborn nature and the stupidity of the people that ran Torchwood. An organization that, irony of ironies, had been created due to the actions of Rose and the Doctor themselves. Joan he'd lost because he was too different, too extreme as a Time Lord for her to love. How had Tim Latimer put it? Fire and ice and rage. Yes. That was him. Hot and cold and unpredictable and _angry_… The Doctor's hands began to shake and he hastily shoved them into his pockets as he stared unseeing at the console. So much anger, guilt, and madness swirled endlessly at the center of him. It cost him much to be able to seal it away.

All of these pains, all of these losses were heaped upon him because of one thing: his own actions in the Time War. But it went back farther than that, didn't it? A long time ago, eons it felt like, the Time Lord Celestial Intervention Agency, the CIA, had sent him on a mission into Skaro's past with precise instructions to wipe the daleks out before they ever reached the point of threatening the rest of the galaxy. He'd gone… and failed. Purposefully. Intentionally. He'd looked at the daleks in their infancy and had been unable to slaughter the baby in the cradle for what it would grow to do. So he'd tinkered with their genetics. Introduced into their psyche the question of 'why', thinking then that those two things would be enough to put them on that one shining path where they became prosperous, if slightly aggressive, members of the galactic community. Then he'd flown away with a sense of relief, confident that he'd managed to spare his soul the scars of genocide.

How young and foolish he'd been back then.

And there was no fixing it now, no rewriting his actions. Time is set in a Time Lord's wake. Once a Time Lord has been involved the events are essentially fixed. Or so he tells himself so that he can sleep. The truth is that time is in flux. Save for a few key fixed moments, time is _always_ in flux. Even the loss of Rose could be fixed, altered, made to never have happened if only he would break all the rules of time.

He could. It would be so easy.

But he refrained. Kept himself busy and focused on other things so that he didn't think about how _simple_ it would be to send himself a message back through the Vortex. He had a hypercube somewhere deep in the TARDIS. He could warn himself away from Earth then. Or tell himself to arrive earlier. Or not to send her away that final time. It could very well have been that last trip through the Void that had tipped the balance between the strength she had to hold on, and the pull of the fissure. So many things he could have done differently. So many things he should have. And it would be so _easy_ to…

He wrenched his mind away from the seductive train of thoughts. He _could not_ cross back over his own timeline. Not even for Rose. Especially not for Rose. He ran the risk of pulling them apart prematurely. Even thinking too hard about how to avoid her loss caused his memories of their times together to get fuzzy. He didn't dare actually _do_ anything.

But Rose…

"Augh!" He threw his hands in the air and paced out of the control room, his shoulders hunched, brows drawn down deep over his eyes. Thinking of ways to avoid her loss was only secondary to the main problem that he found himself chewing over these days. Mostly, he thought of how to get her back. He had a list of ways to retrieve her from the parallel world twenty items long. Fully a third of them would destroy Pete's World before he could ever get through the Void into it. Five of them would destroy this universe instead. The remaining ways would destroy them both. Gallifrey had machines, huge underground machines spanning hundreds of parnets long that had been used to locate, separate, and open doorways to the parallel worlds. It had taken dozens of workers to operate, and even more to keep it running. One Time Lord on his own, with nothing but a TARDIS, simply couldn't bridge the gap safely.

Once again, he was left lamenting the course his life had taken. If only…he shook his head and hunched his shoulders, lowering his head as if to plow through his thoughts and leave them scattered in his wake. The truth was that there _was_ a way to get her back. One that wouldn't involve the destruction of anything. It would, in fact, require the _creation_ of something. Namely, a permanent, stable doorway between the realms. But creation was, in many ways, far more dangerous than destruction could ever be. Kill a man before his time, destroy a wall before it is built, and time will flow around the change with very little problem. A new person will fill the old one's shoes, a fence will go where the wall had been.

But an _addition?_ The creation of something that wasn't there before forever altered the flow of time. And something as major as the building of a doorway would have so many consequences he couldn't calculate them all. Not to mention that it would require violation of the most basic of all the Time Lord rules. He would have to go into Gallifrey's past.

But even that wasn't as simple as it sounded. Putting a block on Gallifrey's timeline was the very first thing the Time Lords had done when they learned how to use time travel. No one and nothing was capable of moving backwards along Gallifrey's timeline. To even begin to rescue Rose, he would have to dig down deep into the heart of the TARDIS and rip out the restraining collar that was buried there. A process that would be painful and exhausting for the Doctor and his magnificent time ship. Also, it could kill them both.

He wandered the hallways, hands sunk deep into his pockets. He could risk everything to have her back. His life, the life of his TARDIS. Even potentially the lives of all his people, if he managed to muck anything up.

But she was worth it.

And that's what it came down to, wasn't it? If she was worth the potential cataclysmic damage he could cause by going back into his people's past. For a human that would die within a century. His people weren't even proper adults by the time they hit the one hundred year mark. But this was _Rose._

The Doctor stopped walking and put his hand on the softly curved wall of the TARDIS. Whenever it was just him, with no companions about, he talked to her in the language of the Time Lords. It was the only time he ever heard it being spoken. It wasn't much, but when you were the last of your kind, you held onto every scrap of your people you could. «What do you think, Old Girl? Is this something I should attempt? Or am I mad for even thinking it?»

There was no discernible response from the TARDIS, but there never was. Each capsule was imbedded with the consciousness of an eleventh-dimensional being, their minds so vast and complicated he was just as incapable of understanding how her mind worked, as the humans he traveled with were able to understand his. She literally existed across all of space and time at once. When the TARDIS traveled through time, it wasn't _really _traveling through time. More like, asking the TARDIS to slide the capsule along the line of her consciousness to another spot on her being. Rather like sliding a bead along a string. If that bead was actually a trans-dimensional object with no true outer form and the string was a vast web-like network spanning eleven different dimensions with no discernible end point and a mind of its own.

So, no. Not really like sliding a bead along a string.

Still, she could communicate in her own way. Words were beyond (or beneath) her, as were things like pictograms. Complex ideas were easier for her to understand, they more closely approximated her own existence. Now, he closed his eyes and focused on his plan for getting Rose back. It was sufficiently complicated that she would be able to understand it. He hoped. _If_ he could capture enough of her consciousness that she would pay attention.

The Doctor began by searching inside of himself for the psychic connection the TARDIS used to translate alien languages for his companions. It was faint, and generally passive, his companions simply understanding the alien cultures without effort on his part. This time he purposefully activated the link while focusing on his plan, carefully holding all its myriad of points together in his mind. Like an origami artist holding the edges of the paper together in preparation for the next crease. He knew his message had been delivered and understood when the hallway began to glow gold behind his eyelids.

«So what do you think Old Girl? Do we dare?» he asked again.

When he'd closed his eyes, he'd been deep within the hallways of the TARDIS. Somewhere between the Forvestan gardens and the library of cheese. Now, he was standing at the mouth of a hallway, and directly in front of him was the control room. And one very specific grate had been strategically moved out of the way, exposing the wires and tubes leading into the heart of the TARDIS.

He walked warily into the room and stopped at the edge of the hole in the floor, hands in his pockets. He tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. «It'll hurt, you know. A lot.»

The grating rattled farther away from the hole, opening it up wider.

The Doctor stood there for a long moment, thinking about his plan. Examining it from all angles. Checking it for flaws. There were a disturbingly large number of things that were left up to luck and chance. And so much depended on the TARDIS' ability to navigate them through such a treacherous time in the Vortex. But she'd gotten his message. She understood his plan. And she'd expressed her approval in the best way she could.

He turned away, shucking his jacket and tie. He returned to the grating, rolling his sleeves as he went. «You ready for this, Old Girl?»

But there was no response.

She'd already left. The majority of her consciousness and attention already flowing along the lines of her own existence, too vast and complicated to be tied to one single point for long. He wished she could have stayed with him longer, but he had her support. That would have to be enough for now.

Squatting down, he wormed his way into the hole, batting away tubing and low-hanging wires as he went. He'd long since left the opening behind him when he found his goal. Deep down, meters and meters below the console with its myriads of button and switches was the slave collar. Oh it had a fancy name. Redirection Circuit or Co-ordinate Adjuster. Or perhaps it was the Uniciary Proporform Restriction and Guidance Module. But he had no use for scientific babble when there was no companion around to impress. And the name didn't change what it did. This complex bit of organic and metallic material had one very simple purpose: to restrict the natural ability of a TARDIS to travel wherever and whenever it had/has/will have ever existed across the course of its 'life'. Its construction was the deepest mystery of Gallifrey. Even its existence wasn't taught in the Academy. He only knew about it because of a combination of luck, curiosity, and the overwhelming boredom he'd been subjected to while acting as a Chancellor on the Supreme Council.

Now that he was actually faced with the thing, the Doctor realized that he had no actual idea where to begin. How to go about removing it without actually destroying the center column it was wrapped around. He studied the way the TARDIS had grown around the collar much the same way a tree would grow around a bolt sunk into its bark.

This was going to take a lot of work.


	3. Chapter 2

It took him ten years – Gallifreyan time – to get the collar off. So that was 32.683 Earth years. Roughly. And he'd not yet even attempted the fantastically difficult and stupidly dangerous trip through the Vortex yet. Good thing he had a time machine. By linear time, Rose was already in her fifties. So much time with her would already be lost. His hands tightened on the collar as he hauled it away from the console and into the scrap room. No sense wasting genuine Gallifreyan technology; he needed every bit of it that he could get.

The Doctor spared a thought for Martha. It had been ten years since he'd seen her last. He was high from finally managing to remove the collar and could do with a bit of companionship again. Someone else to talk to besides his ship, who was only truly listening a fraction of the time anyway. And besides, the TARDIS needed to recover from what was essentially surgery without any form of anesthetic.

He cleaned up the console room and replaced the grate. Then, just because he could, danced around the whole circle with his eyes closed. For ten years, this room had been the focus of all his concerted efforts and it had resulted in a mess of wires and cables as he performed delicate surgery on the Old Girl. But now it was finally clean, and he was overjoyed.

He input the coordinates, pulled his jacket back on, and threw the lever, activating the TARDIS' motion protocols for the first time since he'd left Martha so long ago. The sound of the materialization sequence made him grin. It had been too long.

He stepped out of the TARDIS and had just managed to cross one leg over the other with folded arms so that he was the picture of nonchalance, when Martha came barreling around the corner at him.

"Doctor!" she called with a wide smile.

"Miss me?" he asked cheekily.

She stopped and dropped her smile, turning her head away as she tried to convince him of her sincerity, "No. Course not."

"Yeah, you did."

Her smile returned, more brilliant than ever. "Yeah, I did."

He took two steps forward, holding his arms out for a hug and she met him halfway, tucking her head under his chin.

"Do you feel better?" she asked from the region of his chest.

"Sorry, what?" He pulled back to look at her better.

She moved away and looked him in the eyes. "I know it's been more than five and a half hours for you. Time machine, right? So, do you feel better?"

His gaze softened and he pulled her into another brief, but tight hug. "Yes. Thank you."

His sincerity stole her breath. He was so rarely anything other than the happy-go-lucky companion that she knew. She treasured these moments when he allowed the mask to drop and she saw beyond to the man underneath. It hurt her deeply to know that each time she saw his true self, he was hurting fiercely. Did she see beyond the mask because he was too hurt to keep it up? Or was he simply always hurting, mask or no?

He let her go and gestured at the TARDIS. "Ready?"

"Yes, "she said, watching his mask slide smoothly back into place, "let's go."

ooOO00OOoo

They set off again, exploring planets and righting wrongs. It wasn't all madness and chaos, like she'd originally thought it was going to be. They could go weeks, even months without running into trouble. But then he would see something, hear something, and the next thing she knew, they would be running for their lives. All was back as it had been.

Until this last time. They'd landed on the galaxy's largest garden. He'd wanted to show her a particularly ugly flower that produced the perfume she'd found in a market and favored so much. They were laughing and having fun. Then they turned the corner and entered a massive rose garden. Instantly, his smile had slid off his face and he'd swallowed painfully.

His voice had been so soft, she wasn't sure she'd heard him. And his words…they'd shaken her, though she was unable to say why.

"What am I doing?"

He turned then and left the garden. Trundled back to the TARDIS and slammed the door in her face. She stared at the closed door for one long, unblinking moment. Maybe he didn't know she'd followed him back to the TARDIS?

Maybe.

She slid her key tentatively into the lock only to discover that he hadn't locked it behind him. "Doctor?" she called warily, sticking her head through the doors. She swallowed her next words. She wanted to ask if he was okay. But she knew he wasn't. She was going to ask if there was anything she could do. But she knew there wasn't. A question about what had happened sat on her tongue. But she knew.

Roses - Rose.

Still she haunted the Doctor. Martha felt a flash of resentment for this woman who'd made the Doctor love her and then run away. Who was she to do this to him? The way he was staring at the _floor_ for god's sake. As if it held all of his hopes and dreams inside of it. She came inside and stood beside him, joining him in his contemplation of the grating. He sighed and tilted his head back, gazing at some far-off thing. He may have been standing next to her, but he was miles away.

She wasn't surprised when, the next week, he tried to drop her off at her apartment – just for a night. He'd be back in the morning. Promise. But it didn't work the way he'd wanted it to. Because they'd landed in Cardiff first to refuel. And that was when Captain Jack had arrived.

ooOO00OOoo

"…so this is me," she said tremulously, straining to keep the tears in her heart out of her voice, and off her face, "getting out."

The Doctor made to speak, but she cut him off.

"I spent all these years training to be a doctor. Now I've got people to look after. They saw half the planet slaughtered, and they're devastated. I can't leave them."

"Of course not." He gave her a soft, heartbreaking smile and she wavered. She had spent a year away from him. A year traveling on her own. A year dodging and hiding. A year of escaping death and telling stories. A year of so much pain and misery. Of despair so deep she never thought she'd crawl out of it.

But she had. She'd missed him- fiercely. But she'd grown strong without him, and this was something she had to do. For her family. For herself.

"Thank you," he said finally, "for everything." Then he stepped forward and enfolded her in his arms for the first time in over a year. For the last time. He pulled away and graced her with a brilliant grin. "Martha Jones, you saved the world."

"Yes," she said smugly, channeling some of his ego. "I spent a lot of time with you thinking I was second best. But you know what? I am _good._"

He laughed.

She fished her phone out of her pocket and tossed it at him, even as she backed down the ramp away from him. "Keep that." She pointed a stern finger at him. "Answer it when it rings! I'm not done with you yet."

She caught his salute just as the door swung shut.

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor left the TARDIS spinning in the Vortex. Well. That was that, then. No more Martha. He couldn't blame her. Not really. He'd treated her horribly. Even when being nice to her, he'd only used her for her admiration. For her joy. For the distraction she provided by being so completely and distinctly not Rose.

Rose…

Even now, he missed her. Time for part two, then. He turned on his heel and headed purposefully for the library.


	4. Chapter 3

He emerged from the library two Gallifreyan weeks – almost ten human weeks – later, still in the clothes he'd been wearing and with enough facial hair for small animals to begin to nest. In his hands he held a stack of papers so thick he could barely wrap his hands around it. Every bit of the papers was covered front and back with small, interlocking circles. Calculations for the trip through the vortex in the language of his people, the only language with words and concepts for the insanity he was about to attempt.

He stumbled into the console room, dumped the pages on the captain's chair, and staggered away, completely ignoring the way the papers had promptly toppled and spilled over the side of the chair and onto the floor. He needed to sleep, eat, and shower – in that order. Everything else could wait.

ooOO00OOoo

Showering was like coming alive, and the Doctor felt his mind begin to move again. To run back over the calculations he'd done while sleep-deprived; checking their accuracy now that he was back at one hundred percent. Thus far, they were holding. He could do this. The Master had damaged his beautiful TARDIS greatly while she'd been at his non-existent mercy, but she'd taken the time he was in the library to heal herself and she was almost as good as new. It was really only a matter of luck that he'd not discovered what the Doctor had done in removing the slave collar. They were bruised by what they'd survived in the year-that-never-was, but they weren't beaten yet. They had survived the destruction of Gallifrey; they would survive this, too.

What they both needed now, was a goal. Something tangible to accomplish to take their minds off what had happened. And getting Rose back was the best goal of all. To that end, only one thing was left: the chameleon circuit.

Police boxes didn't exist in his people's history, much less blue ones. He would have to repair the circuit so that he drew as little attention to himself as possible. This trip was going to be quite out of the ordinary. He was going to have to keep an extremely low profile. He was going very far back in his people's history. Far enough that they would only have the basest of time travel working. Time but not space. Assuming they would have even that much. He dare not kick up a fuss. Dare not do _anything_ memorable.

He thought up names to use while he was repairing the circuit. Theta Sigma was his old Academy name. They'd simply given the applicants numbers to go by until they'd chosen their own. He was applicant number nine thousand two hundred. So, theta sigma he was. But that was out of the question now, for obvious reasons. As was using his true name. Even if he could have said it. He toyed briefly with the idea of translating 'Doctor' into Greek letters, to continue the theme. But that would make him 'Delta Omicron Tau Omicron Rho', which would be annoyingly long to say when introducing himself. Considering that he was doing this for Rose, he then thought about translating 'Rose' to Greek. It would be the much shorter 'Rho Omicron Sigma'. But…no. Knowing Rose, she would somehow manage to worm it out of him that he'd used her name and then where would he be? He shuddered. No. Best not to go that route.

But what to use, then? Something normal. Something common. But not so common as to rouse suspicion. In the end, he decided on Bititzio. It was the shortest of all the ancient names he could recall, and had the added benefit of not having any sort of attached meaning to it. The Gallifreyan equivalent of John Smith.

With the chameleon circuit repaired, there truly wasn't anything stopping him from racing through the annals of time in a mad quest to build a door to an alternate universe and rescue Rose. Second thoughts (oh, who was he kidding? He was up to two hundred thousand now.) rose in his mind, but he pushed them down ruthlessly. He'd been over and over the plan. Everything was as safe as he could make it. And he _would_ get Rose back.

He approached the console and delicately laid one hand on the upright time rotor. Like he had all those months ago, he reached inside himself for the connection he had with the TARDIS, trying to capture her attention. He would need it if he had any hope of navigating the traps and obstacles the Time Lords had put in place for the express purpose of keeping someone like him from doing exactly this. If he was any less brilliant, had any less experience piloting a six-man console by himself; if his TARDIS was any younger with any less experience than _she_ did, if their bond wasn't so strong…then this endeavor really would be impossible. As it stood though, it was merely _extremely_ dangerous and more than a little likely to end in disaster.

Once more, the Doctor held the plan up to his ship, asking if it was possible, plausible, correct. They _could_ do it. Maybe. But _should_ they? _Tell me this is the right thing to do, _he pleaded with his TARDIS. She, who could see more of time and space than he could. _Tell me this is good and true._

He felt her respond, felt the rotor under his hands and the grating under his feet come alive in a way he'd felt few times before. She had come.

When he opened his eyes, he could not help but gasp in amazement. The room was alive with swirling eddies of golden particles dancing and spinning together in rivers of light that streamed over, around, and through everything. He laughed aloud and spun in delight, his arms out and head thrown back.

"Hello, Sexy!" he sang.

The lights spun with him and for a while, they danced together.

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor input the partial coordinates into the console, marking a spot farther down the time corridor as their destination, rather than a landing location along its walls. He braced himself, feet shoulder width apart. This was quite likely going to be the bumpiest ride of his very long life. He looked up at the glow of the TARDIS' presence and nodded once in determination. Then he flipped the lever.

Instantly, the TARDIS began to shake. Slowly and subtly at first, it was nothing more than a slight increase in the normal vibrations that ran through it. But as he navigated them through the Vortex, as the TARDIS slipped closer and closer to the Time Lock surrounding the Time War, the capsule began to shake more and more violently, the peaks and troughs getting larger as the frequency increased. He ran around the console, pressing buttons and throwing switches at lightning speed. The shaking continued to escalate, causing him to stumble as he reached for the trans-dimensional thrusters to adjust their feedback flow. Timelines and futures bloomed before his eyes. A dozen a second whirled before him as he reached for the lever in slow motion. But he wasn't fast enough. He wouldn't reach the lever in time to keep the temporal storm outside from slamming him quon-ways (a direction parallel to, but not actually associated with, the typical three dimensions humans understood) into the grasping, destructive fingers of the Time Lock. All that effort put into freeing the TARDIS from its control collar, and he was going to fail.

But then the gold mist of the TARDIS' consciousness swirled around the lever and slid it smoothly into place. He straightened out of his stumble, eyes wide, as he watched the TARDIS fly herself, adjustments to her trajectory and speed made with an efficiency he could only stare in awe at.

He jumped in the air and gave a whoop of victory, "That's my girl!" Then he stepped forward and grasped the dimensional stabilizers with one hand, and the squark stick with the other. Together, they would make it through.

Which ended up being a much more difficult endeavor than it had sounded on paper. Even with the help of the TARDIS herself, the Doctor still found himself scrambling around the console as he tried to navigate them around the Time Lock. It was alternately smooth and slick, like a marble, trying to glance them off its surface in a random direction (a feat it had managed a few times), and hard and spiny, like a porcupine, with long fingerlike protrusions built to reach out and snare (then destroy) any passing ship foolish enough to get too close. It hadn't succeeded in that part – yet.

Once again approaching the Time Lock, hoping to slide around it and farther down the timeline, he watched the monitor carefully for it to switch from porcupine to marble. Sure, it would be easier to pilot the TARDIS close to the lock while it was in porcupine mode, but it would also be exponentially more dangerous. He couldn't tell Rose he loved her if he was in a million pieces.

With one eye on the console monitor, one eye on the TARDIS dust, and one on the rest of the console room, wary of any more fires that might spring up – wait that was too many eyes…

The room rocked violently as the Lock began to emit the energy signatures signaling a shift into defense mode.

"Hold on, Old Girl! We're going for it!" He threw the throttle forward into max, removed the stabilizers altogether, and took four of the remaining ten directional guidance switches directly to hand.

The TARDIS settled on the console, completely wrapping the rotor and all its assembled controls in golden eddies of light. And this time, _this time,_ they finally managed to slide around the Time Lock without being summarily ejected from the surrounding area. He gave a cheer of victory, but didn't stop moving. Practically, they'd only managed to move backwards in time by one second. He still had a billion trillion Gallifreyan years to go.

"Allons-y!"

ooOO00OOoo

The TARDIS landed with one final soft bump and the Doctor watched as the glow of the TARDIS consciousness swirled around him once, then faded away. Alone again, as he ever was. Not that he begrudged her the rest. Focusing her consciousness down to one single point in time was incredibly difficult for her. To then follow it forward linearly while still inside the Vortex? _While_ navigating around the toughest barriers and traps his people had been able to conceive?

Well, she deserved a rest.

In fact, the Doctor thought as he pried his poor cramping hands away from the controls, so did he. He stumbled his way down the corridor that lead to his bedroom, mentally and physically exhausted. He approached his bed and flopped down on it face down, the force of his fall caused it to swing from where it was suspended from the ceiling. Within seconds, his eyes were closed, and for the first time in a long time, silence reigned in the TARDIS.


	5. Chapter 4

When the Doctor emerged, it was with bright eyes and a bounce in his step. He'd been too exhausted to really take it in before. But it was becoming real to him now. Not only had he managed to wrench free the restraining collar from his sexy TARDIS, but then said TARDIS had helped him pilot herself around a Time Lock and through all the traps set up by ancient Time Lords to finally come to a stop at a point in the Vortex so far into Gallifrey's past that there were no more traps.

Entering the console room, the Doctor brought up the scanner and looked through the information the TARDIS had collected while he'd slept. According to this, he was 563,482,629 years before he was loomed. Gallifreyans and Time Lords had yet to make the decisive split. Rassilon and Omega hadn't trapped and tamed a black hole, and his people had only one lifetime. He was so far back in his people's past that all records of this time had been sealed. He knew nothing about what his people were like - it was exciting!

The Doctor picked a spot several kilometers away from the open rift into the Vortex that would one day be the center of his people's civilization. He really didn't want to go anywhere near the untamed, wild energy of the Untempered Schism right now. Or ever again, really.

Sure, it was the Schism that made his people what they were. Gave them their time senses and allowed them to regenerate. So what? It terrified him. And he wasn't going near it.

The TARDIS landed silently and without a bump, her characteristic sound silenced for the duration of their stay on ancient Gallifrey.

Suddenly it hit him with the force of a charging nathak. He was on Gallifrey again! A Gallifrey without the horrors of war, or the pompous asses who had run the society for several millennia. A huge grin spread across his face at the thought. Gallifrey! Twin suns, orange sky, red red grass... He bound down the ramp and through the doors, allowing them to slam shut behind him.

Gallifrey…

He stood there and just soaked it up. No matter how many planets he stood upon, or how many different atmospheres he breathed, there was always something just a little bit off about all of them. Some vague undefined bit of _wrongness_ that acted as a small irritant. Reminding him at all times that this was not the world he had evolved to walk upon. A trillion trillion years of evolution and self-evolution had never quite removed from his people the vertigo associated with standing on any world but their own. Too many senses to be fooled by the mere closing of the eyes.

He felt no such vertigo now. Just the breeze brushing his cheeks and ruffling his hair. He opened his eyes to a sight he thought never to encounter again. The TARDIS, beautiful thing that she was, had parked herself right in the middle of a forest. The silver leaves and trunks of the trees burned with the light of the rising first sun. He stood with his feet on a game trail. Sardurs, by the look of the tracks. Sardurs were creatures that looked like nothing so much as the Echidna from ancient Greece back on Earth. Great snakes with arm-like appendages coming out the sides of their bodies and a brilliant purple crest for the males, each tipped in poisonous barbs. That was in addition to the claws on the ends of their arms as well as their toothy mouths and voracious appetites. Horribly aggressive, they were.

Best move on, then.

He turned and looked at the TARDIS, expecting for a moment to see a blue box sitting incongruently amongst the silver trees. When no such shape presented itself, he recalled with chagrin that he'd fixed the chameleon circuit. His beautiful blue box was masquerading as a tree at the moment. He stepped back up to the silver annielo he knew to be his TARDIS and inspected the bark carefully for the keyhole. Always important to know how to get into ones timeship.

Once satisfied that he'd found it, the Doctor set off at a jaunty walk, his tongue clasped firmly between his teeth to keep from whistling a happy tune. He was on Gallifrey again! For hours he wandered. He took in the sights, the scents, the sounds, greedy for every bit he could get. A small recording disc hovered silently at his left elbow, filming anything and everything he came in contact with. Once he had built the door, he couldn't ever come back. The temptation to change things would be too strong. It already was almost unbearable.

Following the signal from his screwdriver, he emerged from the forest onto the top of a small hill and found himself faced with the mountains Solace and Solitude. He was surprised to find the beginnings of the Panopticon nestled in the valley between the two mountains. It was more of a village than a city, really. Couldn't be more than three thousand souls living inside its borders.

With a start he realized that he should be able to hear these people in his mind. Should be able to feel their presence even at this distance. He opened his barriers and stretched out his mind, searching telepathically for the people he could see before him. He found them, but they weren't the same. They gleamed brightly against the backdrop of his mind, but without the riot of colors designating other telepaths. He was so far back that his people hadn't developed telepathy yet.

"Well paint me green and call me a colddrake." He'd always enjoyed taking strange human sayings and injecting a bit of Gallifrey into them. But this one was…"No, no. That's horrible. Not saying that again." He reached out with his hand and caught the recording disk. A quick buzz with the screwdriver and it floated away from him and down into the town.

He retreated to the edge of the forest and settled down to wait for the disk to return. He needed to know - to be absolutely certain - of everything there was to know about the town before he went down and tried to insert himself into their lives. For now, their timelines were strong. But he knew how frail they could be. How quickly they could unravel and leave their subject grasping at the threads of their own existence.

It was probably best that his people hadn't developed their telepathy yet. He missed their presence in his mind so fiercely, he probably would have been unable to protect his secrets from them. And that would be so utterly cataclysmic it simply didn't bear thinking of.

After an hour, the disk came floating back, filled with non-stop images of the daily going ons in the lives of his ancestors. He took it back to the TARDIS and spent the remainder of the day studying its contents in detail, determined to learn as much as possible. Then he wiped the information from the disk and prepared for bed - after saving the information to the TARDIS core, of course.

As he stripped his clothes off, he considered how odd it was to be back on Gallifreyan time. His people measured time by such a vastly different method that human and Time Lord ways simply didn't match up. Just as with the Gallifreyan language, there literally _was_ no translation between the two concepts. Only, there was a very basic form, of course. Things that_ could_ be translated to things like hours, minutes, days, and years. But the bulk of the way his people expressed time was characterized by words used to describe what they observed using the other eighteen senses they had. Their 'time senses'.

But these people...they had yet to discover the stable rip in space/time that would one day become the Untempered Schism. Was already the Untempered Schism. Would always be and never be the Untempered Schism. Their perceptions of time were just as rudimentary and flawed as the humans'.

The Doctor was hit with a wave of longing and loneliness. He had no telepathic connection to these people. No temporal connection. And, as shown by the data from the disk, no cultural connection. For all intents and purposes, these were not his people. He was alone on Gallifrey, as he ever had been.

ooOO00OOoo

He spend a Gallifreyan month (five weeks per sixty days or 4706.352 hours Gallifreyan which was 15,381.77024 earth hours went the running mathematical monologue in the back of his mind) sending the disk out to capture the life of these ancient ancestors. Every time he cleared its memory banks and sent it back out, he got a clearer image of who these people were. Paired with his understanding of timelines, he was fast approaching the point where he would be able to attempt a first contact. The really hilarious thing about how careful he was being was that it was looking more and more like he had no reason to be. His first impression of this time period had been of a Gallifreyan equivalent of the Earth's 21st century. The more he studied the recordings, the firmer that impression became. Cars, banks, mobile phones...it was all the same. Could it be that his people had something to do with the way the humans had developed on Earth? The similarities between these people and the ones that evolved on Earth were just too eerily similar. But that was a puzzle for another day. For now, all he needed to do was learn about the Gallifreyan culture before him; then he had to locate someone with a weak - but resilient - timeline, pluck them out of it, and carefully insert himself in their place. Easy-peasy.

Right.

Still, one week later, he was stepping out of the TARDIS for the final time in what was likely to be several months of back-breaking work.

He had a plan, one that was as simple as he could make it. Boiled down to its simplest form it was this: 1) Locate and dig up some daygum rocks. 2) Put them in a state of quantum entanglement so that their futures and timelines existed symbiotically - what happened to one would inevitably happen to the other, no matter the distance between them. 3) Follow this world forward until the formation of Pete's World. 4) Hurl one rock through the widening gap between the worlds, building a bridge into the parallel world using the daygum rocks as keystones in the doorways. 5) Create a closed circular paradox with the rocks so it becomes a set point in time. 6) Rescue Rose.

Six steps. A much simpler and easier plan than some of the ones he'd concocted in the past. Except for the parts that required him to insert himself into Gallifrey's timeline without destroying it. And the part that required him to entangle two rocks...and the whole make-a-circular-paradox thing.

All right. So not that simple after all.

Still, he could do it. He knew he could. The execution would be nothing less than horrendously difficult, but he would manage. Because the idea of leaving Rose abandoned on Pete's World made his hearts break. And this way, she wouldn't have to choose between him and her family. With a stable doorway between the realms, they could come and go freely. He'd never wanted to make her choose. Oh, he'd pulled her away from dinner, or refused to stay for a cuppa. But he'd always brought her back. And she was the first. He'd never returned companions to their families before. Never stayed for Christmas dinner like he did after he regenerated. But she brought that out in him. All the things he'd studiously avoided in eight lifetimes, and he'd done it all cheerfully for one slip of a girl named Rose Tyler who had seen him for who he really was - and challenged him to be better.

The Doctor was smart. He'd never made any pretense of being anything but. He knew how Rose had felt about him. Had known even when he'd been in his ninth body and full of so much anger. He'd soaked in her love like a sponge, used it to shore up the holes in his ragged sense of self-worth. She'd believe in him, believed he'd always do what was right, even as she chastised him. He'd made all of his companions better. Braver, wiser, more compassionate. Better able to care for themselves and far more willing to stand up and do what was right. All of them were better for having known him. All but Rose. _He_ was better for having known _her._

After the Last Great Time War, the Doctor had felt the worst sort of jaded. She knew he was the last of his kind. She knew he was the one to end it by killing all his people, taking the Daleks with them. She knew that it had been a last act of desperation that had driven him to destroy two of the most ancient and powerful civilizations. She had assumed that he had destroyed Gallifrey to keep the Daleks from gaining access to his people's technology, or to keep them from what the Daleks would do if they'd managed to overrun the planet or because he had been instructed to. She didn't know he had done it because his people were _winning._

He thought back to the horrors he'd seen in the interminable years he'd fought in the war. All the terrible things did to each other...bombings and biological warfare; guns, knives, and bare fists. Hitler, Stalin, Waldorf, and Missengrade. None of them, _none of them_ compared to the misshapen creatures the Time Lords had concocted to fight off the invading Dalek force.

The Might Have Been King and his army of Neverweres. A Creature made up of the ten thousand most vicious beings through all of time, cut apart and stitched together _while still living_ to give it an overwhelming rage at everything in existence. Able to break itself into its component parts to attack from all sides with an impossible amalgam of disjointed arms, legs, and various appendages floating independently of the controlling mass. A morass of ten thousand minds forcibly linked together with psychic tethers implanted directly into the centers of the still conscious brains.

The Horde of Travesties. Three creatures born out of the darkest desires of the three most brilliantly twisted serial killers his people had ever encountered. He'd seen them dance gracefully into the oncoming fire of a hundred Daleks and then come out the other side chewing merrily on the tentacles of the Daleks they'd stripped from their casings. One of them preferred to suck out the lone eyeball while the Dalek was still alive. Said it gave better flavor.

And the Nightmare Child. Not a child at all, but really an amorphous black cloud that had been carefully crafted to be able to seek out and mimic the deepest, most elemental fears of its enemies. Each encounter with a new species or individual had only caused it to grow. When it settled over a battlefield, all Daleks had standing orders to turn and run, regardless of their objectives. They would never admit to feeling any fear at all, but the Nightmare Child killed without harming. It played upon the natural paranoia associated with these elemental fears, and caused its victims to turn on each other. At the end, prolonged exposure would so shatter their minds that they would then turn on themselves, ripping open their own flesh to welcome the Nightmare Child to come in and sit on their hearts.

But that was only the beginning. After them came the Forever Young. An army created by the Daleks specifically to combat the Horde of Travesties, these young maidens existed slightly out of phase from the rest of the universe, and so could not be harmed. But they could sync up voluntarily for nanoseconds, and deal massive damage with a single touch of their temporally-syncopated hands.

The Blind Ones were unaffected by the Might Have Been King and his army of Neverweres because they had no psychic awareness and thus created dead zones where their pure mindblindness nullified the tethers keeping the King's consciousness together, rendering it unable to act. They carried psychic weapons which could not harm them, but which stripped the minds away from any psychic victims like sheets of paper.

And the Nothing with which the Daleks had combated the Nightmare Child...

And so it went. Each side created more monsters which got progressively worse as the Time War continued. But then the tide had turned. The Daleks were driven back from where they'd spread across the surface of Gallifrey to just one small base, which had then been summarily crushed.

Oh, the joy they'd all felt when Gallifrey belonged solely to the Time Lords once again. They'd sent their Army of Horrors out to destroy the ten thousand Dalek ships floating in orbit. Then, before the war had truly been won, the talks had begun. Words like, 'retro-rule' and 'galactic compensation' were paired with more frightening terms like 'divine right' and 'Time Gods'.

When they brought Rassilon back, he knew that it had all gone horribly wrong. That the horrendous things his people had done - and the things that were done to them - had broken something fundamental about their natures. Broken and reforged it into something hard that glittered with greed and the banked fires of sadism. Something had to be done, and quickly, or all of the universe would fall under the control of his warped brethren. He'd traced the timelines, followed the war to its inevitable conclusion and saw the influence of his people explode outwards until it encapsulated all of every universe. _Every_ universe. Every parallel world, subspace, pocket universe and alternate timeline tied down and shackled to serve its Time God masters.

He'd had to try. He went before the Senate, before Rassilon and all his Believers. He begged them to stop with the destruction of the Daleks. Wasn't the genocide of an entire race enough? Why must they seek to rule all of Time as well? His questions had gone unanswered. When Romana had turned her back on him, he'd known that he had no choice. Once again, to save all of Time, he would have to make a hard decision. The hardest he'd ever had to make. He would have to destroy his own people...

And so he had.

The worst part, the _worst_ part, was how _easy_ it all was. Even though she'd turned her back on him, Romana still trusted him. She played the part of loyal Believer to Rassilon, but when he showed up on the steps of her Presidential suite, looking to use her power as President to do what had to be done, she needed no distractions or to be turned away. She welcomed him into her Presidential Rooms, gave him access to the Omega archives. Told him to use the only weapon left there and end it all. Once again, he begged. This time for her to come with him. But she refused. They both knew that she would have to stay behind, to mask his departure until the deed was done. He offered to stay in her place, to allow her to be the one to survive. She'd kissed him then, a tender goodbye...and he'd left her to die.

The Moment was innocuous as far as weapons went. Just a wooden box with carvings on it, carvings so ancient that he wouldn't have been able to read them even if he had been in any state to do so. He'd wished for a big red button, something simple and uncomplicated. What he'd got instead was...he couldn't remember it. Curious that.

He did remember what had happened next though. He'd flown into the heart of the battle, saw Davros' ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child...

At the center of Gallifrey, deep in its core, a black hole opened up. Uncontained, unrestricted, it had ripped through superior Time Lord defenses tragically pointed the wrong way. When the Daleks had realized what was happening, they'd tried to retreat. But the Might Have Been King circled around them and blocked their escape. But then Nox, the first of Gallifrey's two suns had gone supernova, and it was all over. Unprepared, not even the Dalek fleet could withstand both a black hole and a supernova.

Weeping, the Doctor had closed the TARDIS doors against the shockwave and felt it slam against the outer shell moments later. The TARDIS had erupted from the outside in. The shell was charred black, the interior burned - and he along with it. He did not fight the fires of regeneration, but welcomed them. He longed to leave the whole horrid war behind. But he'd had one more thing to do, and as the light faded and he stepped out into a new body, he approached the sparking console and pushed a series of buttons he never thought to use.

And sealed all of Gallifrey - Daleks included- in a Time Lock.

Now, he pushed his memories of Gallifrey's death away and focused on the present. Today, he was going to insert himself into a stranger's timeline, take their life as his own, and get. Rose. Back.


	6. Chapter 5

The Doctor approached the town in strange new clothes. His people favored long flowing robes even now, it seemed. For a while, he just wandered. Taking in ancient Gallifrey with his own eyes. Perhaps it was all that time he spent staring at the recordings, but he felt strangely comfortable here. That, and ancient Gallifrey bore a remarkable resemblance to twenty-first century Earth. Cars, mobile phones, even something that smelled remarkably like chips. Rose would have been overjoyed. He felt a pang at that. Rose would have loved to run around his ancient homeland the way he ran around hers. She would look at the pikut vendor and insist on going over to pet one of the hideously fluffy creatures. And the soft-serve malikut would have her in an almost orgasmic bliss over its sweet flavor all afternoon. She would have loved it here. And she would never see it. Still, as different as they were, they were Gallifreyans. He was back amongst his people, and it felt _good_.

He entered a shop that, had it been on Earth, he would have called a deli.

"Good morning!" the woman behind the counter called to him in what would one day evolve into Old High Gallifreyan and he had to fight back his reaction to being addressed in the old language. He focused on the differences on what she was saying and what would one day come to be known as 'traditional', stabilizing his emotions enough that he could respond in a normal tone.

"Good morning," he skimmed his eyes over the menu, unable to determine which type of food he wanted to try first. He wanted to eat it all, it had been so many years since he'd had real Gallifreyan food… He looked back up at the woman with a grin. "This all looks so good, I can't decide what I want. How about you surprise me?"

She laughed at his enthusiasm. "You got it! You ahead and grab a seat, and I'll bring it to you."

The Doctor settled down at the bar and propped his head in a hand while he lazily watched her go about getting his meal together. She placed a glass of _sytaan_ juice before him and he stared down at it for a long moment, struggling with his dual impressions of what it would one day mean and the obvious lack of meaning at this point in time.

"Don't like it?" she asked and reached out to take it away. "That's fine. Some people don't. My sister –"

He snapped out of it just as her fingers closed over the glass. "No," he reached out and laid a restraining hand on her arm. "No, I like it. It's just…my friend used to like it. She's gone now and, well…" he swallowed. "Brings back memories."

The woman smiled kindly and removed her hand, leaving the glass behind. "All right, then." She turned away to continue gathering his lunch. "So, you're new in town. What are you here for?"

The Doctor picked up the glass of juice and took a long swallow, savoring the bittersweet taste before he answered her question. "Since my friend…well, since she's been gone, I haven't really wanted to be tied down to anything. So I've sort of been wandering around. Developed an interest in geology, of all things. She'd laugh at me if she knew I spent my time mucking about with rocks." He looked down and fiddled with his glass a bit, drawing his finger up the side of it and watching the condensation bead along the way. He'd already decided to stick with the truth as much as possible. He needed a cover story, a reason to explain his presence here as well as why he would be spending so much time digging in the grounds around the town. He could have kept Rose to himself without lying, of course. But…well. She was constantly in his thoughts now that he was hip-deep in his mad quest to get her back. And he _wanted_ to talk about her. If only enough to vent a little of the sorrow and grief he felt at her loss.

A plate appeared and slid across the bar at him. He looked up to meet sympathetic eyes. "You loved her."

The Doctor nodded, his tongue thick. "With both my hearts."

She smiled again and patted his hand. "Eat up," her smile brightened into a grin, "it's my special!" When he grinned back, she turned away to tidy up. "You planning on staying long? Will you need a room?"

The Doctor swallowed his bit of _kaflah_, "This is marvelous! And yes, I'll need somewhere to stay. Heard there were some interesting rocks around here. Figured I'd do some digging, see if I could find any."

"You're in luck, then. My Aunt runs the local bed and breakfast. A little old fashioned, but she'll have a place to put your head."

"I'll be fine with whatever she has. No doubt I've slept in worse places."

He finished his meal while they chatted about inconsequential things. Then he fished some of the local currency out of his pocket and paid for his meal. "It was all wonderful, thank you."

"You're welcome. My Aunt is just down the street," she gestured, "go out the doors, turn left, and go down till you see the big fountain. That's the square. She's just on the other side. Look for the dancing hanar."

"My thanks."

The Doctor left the shop and wandered down the street towards the square. Every so often he would check to see if the recording disk was tracking him as it was supposed to. He wanted to record every second that he was here. Every moment, no matter how mundane, would be meticulously catalogued. He hadn't appreciated Gallifrey when he'd had it. He refused to make that mistake again.

He found the inn quite easily, the image of a dancing hanar quite possibly the funniest thing he'd seen yet this regeneration. Of course, this was nowhere near the form the hanar would eventually take. The image on the sign was of two jellyfish looking things swirling around each other. The hanar of the future were six-limbed speed boats with no discernible orifices that communicated via colorful flashes along their snouts and flanks. The hanar of the future had a legend that the 'enkindlers' had given them speech. He'd always meant to find out for sure. But now…well he was reasonably sure he knew who the enkindlers were. Somebody had wanted a smarter pet.

He entered the house and was approached by a lovely matron with brilliant red hair. The Doctor was instantly jealous.

"Welcome! Come in! Sharrion called ahead, said you'd be coming."

"Sharrion?"

"My niece."

"Ah, yes. She said you had a room?"

"Yes. Come see it is to your liking. Then we can talk price."

He followed her down an arched hallway and to a circular room with a round skylight and the hanging bed that was so typical of his people. He hurt all over again at the sight. Just when he'd just about managed to convince himself that these weren't his people, purely to save himself some heartache of course, here was this. A room so classically Gallifreyan it could have come from any of the Great Houses.

He swallowed hard. "Yes. This is perfect. Thank you."

ooOO00OOoo

It took him a matter of moments to get settled into the room, he'd brought a few things with him. After that, he took the rest of the day to wander the town, soaking up everything he could. He'd initially thought that he would need to insert himself into another person's timestream to dampen his influence on the fabric of time here. But that didn't seem to be the case. Perhaps it was because his people had yet to discover time travel, but the whole of Time and Space surrounding this part of the Vortex was remarkably forgiving of his presence here.

He was using his timesenses more now than he had for the last two hundred years. Usually, he was as aware of it as he was his hair: check it when you get up, clutch it when frustrated, thinking hard, or distressed. Otherwise, ignore its existence. But now he was constantly aware of it. Constantly measuring the effect any action or word had on the future of his people.

So far, so good.

He reached out to the piece of furniture that passed as a wardrobe and rapped his knuckles on it. Then looked at his hand, looked at the wardrobe and laughed, shaking his head. So much time spent around humans, he was bound to pick up some of their habits.

As he walked, he considered his plan. He'd learned long ago that things rarely went the way he wanted them to. And this was no exception. His people existed in the center of the Web of Time. A web they had admittedly woven themselves. Because of this, they had an unobstructed non-subjective non-linear point of view with which to view all of time and space. At the height of their power – which had begun approximately one thousand Gallifreyan years after they'd discovered time travel and had lasted until their destruction (no don't think about that) – they'd had an almost unlimited view of all possible futures. Of course, the future was infinite, the possibilities limitless. So they'd contented themselves with watching the top one hundred twenty-eight most likely futures and ignored the rest. A costly mistake.

The computers used to organize, analyze, and store the information on the timelines were massive. The machines spanned hundreds of kilometers. The Doctor was longing for even a fraction of their processing power right now. When he was eighty (the equivalent of a human eight year old) and had just been admitted into the Academy, each of the applicants had been taken before the Untempered Schism. There, they'd looked into the Time Vortex, into the heart of all existence. Each applicant saw something different for, just like time, the Vortex was always moving, changing, growing. Some applicants had been inspired. Some ran away. A few, a very few, went mad.

When it had been his turn to approach the rift in time and space, the Doctor had taken one fleeting look and then run. They'd found him three days later huddled against a tree, shaking. All he'd seen was his name. The _only_ thing he'd seen was his name. Massive and daunting in its complexity, it had been everywhere: burning in the hearts of every star, weaving the galaxies together; it had carved itself into the facet of every existence. And it terrified him.

Back in his room again, the Doctor prepared for bed. He had spent the whole day exploring the town. Which would have really impressed his human companions, given that Gallifrey was twice as big as Earth and possessed two suns as well as revolving at a significantly slower rate. Night only fell once every 78.4392 Earth hours. And because of this, his people were distinctly diurnal, lending them to only sleep for the brief times when darkness covered the world.

The Doctor shook himself and returned to his original train of thought. He hated that about this go 'round. So easily distracted by the smallest things. Like the way his world looked at night, covered with the small lights meant to show the way home. Or the smell of the _kaflah_ bread as it was left to rise. Or…where was he? The Schism. Right.

It was looking more and more like he would have to go back to the Schism. He needed to be able to track where and when in his people's history the decision that had resulted in the creation of Pete' s World had been made. Without his people's equipment and manpower, he had no other way of finding out. When he'd first thought of going to Gallifrey's past, he'd had grand notions of sneaking into one of the monitoring stations and using their equipment to find out. But he'd had to go so far into his people's history just to find a safe place to materialize that he'd completely passed by all of the times that would have had any sort of useful technology. The Untempered Schism was his only chance of finding out now.

Much as he quaked at the thought of going back and staring into the Schism for an undetermined amount of time, he knew he had to. It was the only way. Still…night time. Tomorrow. He'd do it tomorrow.

ooOO00OOoo

Before he left, he stopped off at the desk and told Sharrion's aunt that he'd be gone for the next several days to explore for rocks in the surrounding area. He paid up for the rest of the week, twelve days later. If he hadn't found what he was looking for in the Schism by then, he would come back and reevaluate his decision to avoid times where his people knew how to time travel. He set off towards the TARDIS. If he really _was_ going to go back and stare at the Untempered Schism again, he was going to need a few things.

ooOO00OOoo

He traveled at a leisurely pace, his data disc hovering loyally at his elbow. He'd picked up six more while at the TARDIS, wanting to be sure that he had enough memory space to cover the whole trip. This trip, and the mad quest that had inspired it, was good for him in so many ways and as much as it hurt, he savored every personal interaction, every sight, scent, and touch of this world. He would never have it again.

He arrived at the Untempered Schism a few days later and was surprised to find it buried deep in a wood. All of the histories about the Schism had always spoken of it as being surrounded by fields of dead grass. Supposedly nothing could grow or survive near it. And yet, here it was, surrounded by shining silver trees standing tall against the light of the setting first sun…no wait a minute, that wasn't right. These trees were indeed silver and tall. But they certainly weren't straight. Time flowed unfettered around them, and they existed in all of their stages of life at once.

They were the bright quicksilver color of saplings, but with the height and girth of the most ancient of trees. Their branches bowed under the weight of snow that didn't exist while bright white fruit hung from their ends. And their trunks were bent and gnarled from a storm that seemed to have only just ended, and they'd yet to straighten back out. No wonder his people had cut down the trees when they'd found the Schism. At least the grass had only managed to look a peculiar shade of dead.

From this angle, and with all the temporally-confused trees in the way, it was hard to pinpoint the exact physical location of the gap in timespace. The Schism seemed to…wander.

First it was directly in front of him, then it was three and a quarter meters to the right. A few seconds after, it had migrated to the other side of a transposed flowering cactus from Primarch Prime. It hopped around randomly, the only consolation in that it stayed within the same small area of twisted trees. How had no one noticed this yet? It was just a few days stroll from a village. Surely some adventurous soul had wandered into the woods and found it.

The Doctor took a step back and studied the surrounding area some more. It was the femur peeking out from under a bush that explained it. None of the people from this planet had time senses yet. None of them had grown up around the Schism. None of them had evolved defenses to the uncontrolled flow of time around it. Any hiker approaching this area that had gotten too close to the Schism had suffered the same fate as the trees and died for it.

He shook his head at the tragedy, but knew there was nothing he could do. He set his things down just outside the zone of twisted trees and approached this Schism warily. His hands felt slick and he moved to shove them into his trouser pockets only to remember that pockets were a human concept and he had no such thing in these native garments. Grumpy now, he settled for crossing his arms and stared balefully down at the red bushes hunching dejectedly at the base of the nearest tree. Spying what looked like the skeletal remains of a hand, he thought of how many people had probably been lost to the Untempered Schism. Perhaps he could return them to their families…? But, just like measuring the distances in meters and kilometers, the sanctity of the dead was a human concept. So much time spent away from his own people – even when they _had_ been around – had lent him to picking up his companions' values, quaint though they had been.

Of course, some of those customs changed with time, and he mostly ignored those. But things like loyalty? Reverence for the dead? A love of small, yappy dogs? Those stayed the same. Rather like him when he regenerated. He shuddered. Hopefully he never picked up a love of small, yappy dogs. Though a larger one, perhaps with an intimidating bark –

All right. He was stalling.

His inner child was a gibbering wreck at the thought of staring into the Vortex again. Point of fact, so was an alarmingly large part of his adult self. He wasn't sure if staring into the Schism would even _get_ him the information he needed. Perhaps it would be best if he just went back to the TARDIS and jumped forward a few hundred years. Then he could just make use of the technology of his people.

Only…

Only that would involve not just piloting _past_ the traps in the Vortex, but actually _landing_ in the middle of them. Rather like taking a large metal disk, standing on top, and then sending it hurtling towards a minefield. You could possibly make it, if you adjusted the angle of your giant Frisbee to account for wind shear and elevation and the fact that you had a Time Lord standing on top. You could even make all sorts of hideously complicated calculations designed to predict where the mines were likely to be placed so you could aim your metal-frisbee-come-deathtrap _elsewhere_ …but it wouldn't help. You'd still be standing atop a Frisbee hurtling towards a minefield, and the only thing you could be certain of would be that you were going to regenerate in quite a splendidly messy fashion. And _then_ you'd wake up in the middle of a minefield occupying a strange new body with limited regenerations left and quite a lot of ground to cover before safety was once again achieved.

Or, he could stand a safe six kilometers away from the minefield and stare into a black hole in the ground that would give him horrendously bad nightmares.

Well, when put that way, the Frisbee was looking better and better.

He turned away from the wandering Schism, intent on picking up his things so he could find a nice rock quarry to dig up some rocks – and came face-to-gap with the Untempered Schism.

Once again, his time spent with humans asserted itself.

"Bloody-"

Author's Note: Hanar are a credit to Bioware and Mass Effect. I just stole the idea.


	7. Chapter 6

Just as when he was a child, the Doctor found himself staring into a Vortex filled to the brim with his name. He longed to look away, to run away, to hide himself in the shade of a tree as he had when he was a child. But he _needed_ to know where the split occurred. His quest was doomed without that knowledge. And so he steeled himself, and began to search.

A million, billion, trillion timelines streamed past him, eating away at his awareness. Futures, Pasts, Presents, all existing/never existing/always existing rushed past him, their shining lights instantly snuffed by the next round that swirled around, offered up for his inspection. Planets died before they were born, races that never evolved swam before his eyes. The whole of everything was laid out before him, barred to his gaze.

And through it all, burned his Name.

His mind began to crumble under the onslaught of the information. Not even a Time Lord's brain could handle it all. Only beings like the TARDIS matrix could handle the power of the Vortex for so long. Fear shot through him, and he rotated his mind so that it was the fear that was sheared off next. He was being paired down. Reduced with every new burst of information. His knowledge of planets and stars vanished next, cut away as he was inundated with all the alternate futures of the planet Syrnas. His memories of his past lives vanished, then those of his Academy days. More and more of his thoughts and memories were lost to him until all that was left was a mission. A goal. One final thought so small that it could slide in and around the lines and possibilities of the Vortex without touching them.

His thought – just the one – darted in and out of the waves of information, too small to be destroyed, but large enough to continue with its goal. It sampled currents of time tasting without a tongue, looking without eyes, sensing without skin; for the fracture point where the world-without-a-name existed and the thing-he-wanted-back had been lost/abandoned/stolen/fled to.

Days passed. Years. Eons in a fraction of a second. The dancing thread dipped into current after current, moved on. Came back. Swirled and curled around a singular point in time. It settled there, mission complete. But its very stillness doomed it, for Time was never still, and neither was the Vortex. Alternatives and futures battered the thread, slicing away its existence.

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor came aware and was confused by his own existence. Shouldn't he exist? _Didn't_ he exist? Why was this surprising?

He was spun about, cocooned by the warmth of the TARDIS' comforting presence. She couldn't speak to him in words, but she made her affection for him known just the same. Images of familiar men hovered above and to the right of him, while names and descriptions of a hundred billion stars floated around him, and he wondered where he was that so much knowledge floated tantalizingly out of reach. The gold mist wrapped around the familiar men and drug them closer to him, and he reached out a hand towards them. Right before he was going to connect with them, they dissolved in a shower of silver sparks that hovered for a brief second before flying at him, like so many shooting stars. Something clicked in his mind, and suddenly he knew who those familiar strangers were. Past bodies, past lives. _His _past, staring him in the face.

The gold mist pulled the stars closer and he looked around, even as they began to dissolve into tiny silver sparks. Beyond the stars and planets were mathematical equations. Formal ceremonies of his people waited beyond them, and a cluster of men and women hovered at his side. His life, his memories, everything that made him the Doctor was cocooned from the ravages of the Vortex by the TARDIS, and she was tenderly putting the pieces of him back together.

How long it took, he never knew. He was constantly rediscovering things that he always knew; remembering things he'd never forgotten. "Thank you, Old Girl," he said fondly. Staring into the Vortex as he had done was foolish. So very foolish. But she'd saved him from a danger he'd not even been aware of.

_Was_ saving him.

She floated the last bit of himself over and as he absorbed the essence, he suddenly remembered what he was doing in the Vortex in the first place. He looked around frantically for the beginnings of Pete's World. He knew that he'd found it. At least, he knew that he _thought_ he found it. But all he saw around him was the golden glow of the TARDIS. How to talk to her? He didn't have what he needed – he had to remember…maybe he was still missing a part of himself? The part that knew where the split was.

He spun about and saw a large spiny box being pushed at him by the TARDIS. Its wood was the dark black of the _anneilo_ tree. Metal spears emerged from its edges, seeming to grow straight out of the box. He eyed it warily as she hauled it ever closer to him. There was no sense of familiarity with this like there had been with the other fragments of himself, and it gave him the distinct impression of containing nothing good. But he was surrounded by the powerful, benevolent mind of the TARDIS and had no way to retreat. If only he had more confidence that she was aware of his limitations and wouldn't bring him anything that would re-fracture his mind.

But as he had no other option, he hung there passively as she brought it close enough to press it against the side of his head. As if he'd be able to absorb its contents through osmosis. The metal spines made that more than a little uncomfortable. But she was right about the box, for the spines softened and wrapped around his head in a disturbing, though not overtly threatening manner.

Then the lid cracked open and it was like being hit gently in the head with a sledgehammer. His brain sloshed over the sides of his skull while his eyes rattled about in their sockets, and he was pretty sure his body, wherever it was, had just bitten deep into his tongue. But he understood her message. Mostly. Though the bit about guns and bananas puzzled him a bit.

She pushed him backwards. Or was it sideways with a slightly upwards tilt? Either way, he suddenly found himself stumbling away from an Untempered Schism that had already wandered off. He braced himself against the nearest gnarled tree and proceeded to do his level best to turn his stomach inside out.

ooOO00OOoo

He eventually made it back to where he'd left his bag of supplies. Dropping to his knees, he fished out a bottle of water, carefully rinsing the taste of sick out of his mouth. He was still sorting through the information the TARDIS had given him. Much if it was incomprehensible gibberish, packed with images of alien races he'd never encountered before.

Arched doorways into empty spaces flitted next to large three-lipped six-eyed monstrosities, sat peaceably in the field at the base of a complete bridge that ended abruptly off the end of a cliff, the whole thing shining in the sun…

What she meant by all this, he had no idea. The only thing that did make sense was the coordinates for the split he'd been looking for. The rest would probably work itself out in time.

The Doctor settled his pack on his back and prepared to head back to town, thinking longingly of the bed he had in the room there. But he'd only taken three steps when he remembered his cover story and came to a halt. He was supposed to be a geologist out studying rocks. If he didn't go out and actually dig up some rocks, it would look suspicious. Grumbling about Rose and the lengths he would go for love, the Doctor turned on his heel and headed out to the fields.

ooOO00OOoo

It wasn't that bad, really. Digging up rocks. He always preferred movement to holding still, and this was certainly movement, even if it wasn't particularly in the direction of his goal. He swung the pickaxe and marveled at something so universal even as he watched a chunk of rock break free from the larger mass and tumble to his feet. He gazed down at the crystalline structure and thought how much Rose would laugh at him if he built the doorway out of this stuff. With its density and hardness paired with its structure, it looked like nothing so much as diamond.

He crouched down and poked at the rock. Of course, if he _was_ to use these as the basis of the link between the universes, he'd be better off building a bridge than a doorway. He could just see it. A bridge along the white cliffs of the Sea of Tranquility, anchored on one end in the red grass of his homeworld, on the other, across the void, to a Gallifrey without Time Lords. If he was to put it in just the right spot, it would be hit with the last rays of Nox as it set, and the first rays of Zed as it rose. All day. So long as there was a sun in the sky, Rose's Bridge would glitter and gleam, shine against…wait a minute. That wasn't his imagination. That was one of the images the TARDIS had left him!

He eyed the large boulder before him. That would be much too big to use, and hacking into bits would be far too much effort. Especially since there were plenty of smaller ones at its base he could use.

A bridge of diamond built inexplicably out from the edge of a cliff to cross the boundary into her world so he could be reunited again with the woman he loved. Rose was going to laugh herself sick.


	8. Chapter 7

The Doctor went back to the village and spent the remainder of the week simply puttering around. He wanted Rose back desperately, of course he did. He wouldn't be going through all the trouble of trying to break into Pete's World if he didn't. Hell, he loved her. Loved her with all of his eleven hundred years and both of his hearts. But he loved his people, too. And he would never, never, never again be able to see them in any fashion. More than just soaking up the atmosphere and eating the food, he was systematically acquiring things. Recipes from foods that he remembered, seeds and seedlings from every plant he could get his hands on. Knowledge about the weaving of fabrics and the cuts and styles of clothing. At night, he would sneak back to the TARDIS and squirrel the stuff away. Every item, each plant and book was studied carefully before he picked it up to ensure that its removal wouldn't alter the timelines in any way. He passed over some fantastic things because they _might_ have changed something. He dare not change anything. Far, far too much was at stake.

At the end of the week, he headed back out, looking for the diamond rocks to mine. He found the large cache he sought two days later, far away from the village and That Damn Schism, but a convenient few-hundred meters from a very nice cliff begging for an inexplicable half-completed bridge to be built upon it.

"All right!" he said, throwing off his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. "Rose Tyler, here I come!"

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor threw himself down on the red grass and stared up at the orange Gallifreyan sky. He was tired and dirty, and his arms felt like cooked noodles, while his back was begging to be snapped in two; if it would just end the pain. But he was satisfied. Happy, even. He'd finally finished digging up all the rocks he needed. Now he just had to pair them off, put each set into a state of quantum entanglement, travel forward to the point where Pete' World diverged from this one and…somehow build a bridge from both ends at once.

Hmm.

He jumped to his feet, snatched up his jacket and took off running. He would need to visit the village one more time.

To say goodbye.

ooOO00OOoo

When he skidded into the town, it was to the very unusual sight of a crowd in the town square. He approached the edges and addressed the nearest person. "What's going on?"

The man beside him turned his head slightly, speaking to the Doctor out of the corner of his mouth even as he kept his eyes riveted on the mass of people before them. "Someone went into the cursed forest and came back out again."

"Cursed forest?"

The man's eyes flicked over to the Doctor, trying to identify who it was that didn't know about the cursed forest. "The one on the west side of town. We call it the cursed forest. People go in and don't come back out."

"But he…" The Doctor asked, gesturing towards the center mass, knowing the answer. He was here at the very beginning of the Gallifrey he knew.

What started as a small provincial town would grow exponentially under the influx of the scientists eager to understand the phenomenon that was the Untempered Schism. What was now just a small tear would be carefully widened; a base and a frame built for it to contain the hopping that made it so dangerous for explorers. And all the while, the city around it would be growing steadily. There were still other cities and even countries across the planet, of course. Until it was discovered that close, constant proximity to the contained, enhanced Untempered Schism prolonged the lives of the people and provided extra time-sensitive senses that made understanding – and even slightly controlling – the Schism that much easier. At which point, all the peoples of the world would leave en masse for this one city, making it the _only _city and inadvertently uniting the world under one leadership.

And once they had a world government, well. Things went much faster after that. All of the world's smartest minds would be gathered in one place; all of them bent around the singular goal of discovering the Schism's secrets. Time travel would quickly be discovered, and from there all the possibilities of the galaxy would be laid at his people's feet. Their rule over the galaxy assured, until one sole Time Lord. Far, far down the road, a Time Lord would be loomed that would one day destroy them all, for the love of the universe.

And all that started right now.

"Well, he came back!" the man answered the Doctor's forgotten question.

"Ah," the Doctor said, the only thing he _could _say when faced with the knowledge of how momentous an occasion it really was. This was the start of _everything_.

The man turned back to the crowd and the Doctor took the opportunity to slip quietly away. Originally, he had wanted to stick around for another few days, to properly say goodbye. But that was no longer an option. He had to leave. Now.

He made quick work of checking out of the bed and breakfast, gathering his belongings and returning to the TARDIS before news of the man's miraculous return could spread farther than the town square. He dumped his travel bag just inside the door and started up the long dormant engines. "All right, you sexy thing. Time to do some dancing."

The Doctor made a careful jump sideways in space while maintaining his point in time. Then he loaded the _trenilio_ rocks into the TARDIS. They were much more suited to the endeavor than the _daygum_ rocks he'd originally planned on using.

Putting pairs of rocks in states of quantum entanglement wasn't a particularly difficult job. Well. If by 'difficult' you meant 'required several pieces of rather large and specialized equipment' and by 'task' you meant 'an endeavor of sufficient length and complexity that it took a team of scientists several days to complete'.

Still, he managed it – if after a significant amount of time. The problem, of course, was that he wasn't looking at simply nuking a pair of rocks with some microwaves and presto-zapo! the rocks were entangled. No, it was a bit more complicated than that.

The Doctor took the first pair of rocks, called Alpha and Omega for laughs, and inserted them into the wide end of two carefully crafted cones, their small ends dovetailing together where they met an unassuming bit of crystal. Using his time-senses, he waited until he knew the entanglement would be a success. Then he fired a photon going near light-speed at the crystal, splitting the photon into two smaller photons which then embedded themselves in the rocks in a process the humans called 'spontaneous parametric down-conversion' but which he called 'really fiddly splitting of really small bits into even smaller bits'.

It was ninety percent boredom and ten percent frantic calculations as he tried to exactly time when to release the photon.

When he finally finished imbedding the entangled photons into the rocks – thereby ensuring that the rocks themselves were entangled – the Doctor trooped back to the console room and set the coordinates for five human hours before Pete's World split off. He would need a little time to prepare. Then he went to the doors of the TARDIS and stepped onto the grass of his homeworld for the last time.

He took in the silver trees and the red grass, the orange birds flitting across the sky as one sun set and the other rose. He breathed deeply of the air, relished the fact that he _couldn't _feel the turn of _this_ planet…and turned away. He closed the TARDIS doors behind him and approached the time rotor without a glance behind. Rose was all that filled his thoughts.

He was now on step three of the six step 'Get Rose Back' plan: Follow the world forward until the formation of Pete's World. The last three would go rather quickly. He hoped.

He slid the dematerialization lever and left this time behind. Outside, a large and rather oddly shaped rock slowly winked out of existence.

ooOO00OOoo

When he arrived at the cliff top location, the Doctor wasted no time in unloading the two sets of rocks, keeping them carefully separate. All of this would be for naught if he was to mistakenly keep the pairs together. He picked up one of the first two rocks he had entangled, Alpha, and placed it in the ground, well back from the edge of the cliff. Then he took Omega and carefully set it inside the TARDIS. From there, he took one half of each of the pairings and embedded them in the ground, building the bridge one diamond brick at a time. Once it was complete, he gathered the remaining rocks at the edge of where the TARDIS had shown him the break would occur. Taking up Omega, he tossed it up and down in his hand a few times to test the weight of it. He had only one chance to make this work.

Then, his preparations complete, he waited.

The divergence began and ended as nothing more than a ripple. A wrinkle. A small point in time that folded back and occurred twice, once for each decision causing the split, causing a sense of déjà vu in the people involved.

For the Doctor, outside the event itself and somewhat removed from the physical location (the people involved in making the decisions were standing at the base of the cliff he was about to throw the rock over) it manifested as a slight queasiness in his stomach and a heat wave shimmer in the air. The Doctor skipped two fast steps forward to build momentum and hurled the rock at the waver, hoping that his calculations were correct. This was his one chance to do it right. Omega flew true, blinking out of existence for one brief moment as it passed from this universe and took up residence in a similar – but distinctly separate – universe. Then it reappeared, imbedded in the ground of an alternate Gallifrey that was rapidly unfolding into existence before him like an origami creature unfolding into its original flat shape. But that only lasted for a moment before the window began to fold closed over the still-developing world.

"No!" he cried, and picked up another rock, hurling it through the rapidly closing window. He saw it land neatly next to Omega, just as its partner was nestled next to Alpha. Encouraged, the Doctor picked up the next rock in line. Then the next and the next. Each one was thrown through the shrinking gap. He continued, even after it had vanished…for the rocks continued to vanish as well. Not one of them fell down towards the base of the cliff. Finally, he was done. There were no more rocks to throw.

He looked at the half-a-bridge warily. This wasn't exactly how he'd expected it to go. He thought he'd be able to _see_ Pete's World. Not this…gap of air leading all the…way...down…my there were some sharp rocks down there. The only way to know for sure if the diamond rocks had successfully bridged the way in a manner that would allow him to cross over was to…cross over. And hope he didn't fall to his death instead.

He turned and went back to the TARDIS. "Well, Old Girl," he said, pacing slowly around the console, lovingly touching the knobs and levers as he went. "This may or may not be good-bye." He reached up and put one hand on the silent rotor. «This will work, won't it?» He bowed his head, hoping for an answer. But she remained silent.

He patted her twice, then turned away and exited, locking the door behind him. Then he walked to the cliff and threw himself off the bridge.

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: *shrug* I just felt like giving you two today.


	9. Chapter 8

It wasn't _quite_ as unpleasant as traveling through the Vortex without a capsule. But it was damn close. Didn't stop him from laughing and dancing around, crowing aloud his joy to the empty sky. It worked! He'd made it! Pete's World! He reached down and grabbed fistfuls of red grass, throwing them in the air to watch them rain down like confetti. "We did it! We did it!" He threw his head back and shouted, "Rose Tyler!"

He dashed back to the bridge, the only crafted object in an empty world, and went through. He hurled open the doors of the TARDIS and danced up the ramp, setting the coordinates for far into the future.

_Rose! RoseRoseRose_ his mind babbled like a happy brook as he pushed buttons and turned dials. That's when he felt it. The TARDIS came back.

"Hell-o Sexy!" he crowed, throwing his arms out wide in welcome. "We did it! Clever old thing that you are!"

The golden wisps were back, and they swirled around him once before settling around the dematerialization lever.

"You want to send us on our way? Go ahead!"

But the lever didn't move. Instead, the doors swung open, giving him a look at his glorious diamond bridge. "Yes, it's done," he said, frowning. But she obviously meant for him to look again, so he did. He wandered from one end of the bridge to the other, carefully inspecting it for structural flaws. But there were none. The good thing about building a bridge out of entangled rocks was that so long as one half of the bridge existed, so would the other. The planet could be destroyed (as it one day would be) and the bridge itself would remain, floating in the middle of space.

His eyes continued to flick over the bridge, searching for what the TARDIS wanted him to see. Then he found it.

Alpha.

The first stone he'd dug up, the first he'd lain in the bridge…and the one he would now need to use to create a circular paradox. When he went back inside to retrieve his pickaxe, the sparkles had already vanished. It was the work of a few short minutes to dig Alpha back out of the ground. Then he set it negligently on the Captain's seat while he reset the coordinates. He put his hands on the dematerialization lever and paused for one long moment, waiting for the TARDIS. When she didn't react, he pulled it down, and they were on their way.

Piloting backwards through his own personal past was dangerous. Doing it while the both of him were firmly ensconced in Gallifrey's past was downright dumb. Good thing the TARDIS was backing him up on this one. He wouldn't have ever dared to do anything like this without her.

He materialized right by the rock quarry where he'd dug the _trenilio_ rocks to build the bridge. Only since this was his personal past, the ground was as-yet undisturbed. He grabbed the pickaxe and shovel, quickly digging Alpha out of the ground. Kicking the dirt around so that it wasn't _so_ obvious that someone had been rooting around in the ground, the Doctor returned to the TARDIS and placed the younger fresh-out-of-the-ground Alpha next to the already-entangled one.

Then he went to the console and began to fiddle with the controls. Revving the engines and putting up the strongest temporal shielding, he prepared the Old Girl to withstand the strain of the paradox he was about to create. Then, when everything was set, the Doctor took up the sledgehammer leaning against the railing, hefted it over his shoulder, and brought it down in one mighty swing on the younger Alpha rock, splintering it into smaller bits and powder.

The TARDIS lurched and groaned under the force of the paradox, lights dimming as she strove to keep the older Alpha in existence with the destruction of its younger incarnation. After a few minutes, she settled down, though the engines remained high, and there was an odd, ominous creaking.

"All right, girl. Think you can handle a space jump? We need to go give this to your younger self to complete the loop."

There was no discernible answer, no significantly flickering lights or meaningful flipping of switches. Certainly no glittering gold sparkles hovering in the air. Hoping that it meant she was ready for the jump and not that she was too exhausted to respond, much less move, he threw the lever.

The take-off was slow and sluggish, as if some heavy weight sat low in her belly. Well, perhaps that was true. _He_ certainly had never attempted to keep a paradoxical object in existence while simultaneously jumping said object through space to park alongside a younger version of himself. Which was, of course, exactly what happened. The Doctor married the doors of the older and younger versions of the TARDIS, keeping them flush without any gaps. Then, taking up the paradoxical Alpha, the Doctor stepped across the threshold and into the slightly younger TARDIS.

"Helly Sexy!" He chirruped as he placed Alpha in significant view on the edge of the console. "Younger me will be back shortly," he said, already feeling new memories blooming in his mind. He leaned forward slightly and lowered his voice, as if imparting a great secret. "It works!" Then he yelped cheerfully and dashed back to his TARDIS, slamming the doors closed behind him.

"All right now!" he crowed, dashing around as he set about getting them to Earth's 21st century. "Time to go get Rose! Allons-y!"

The older TARDIS evaporated , leaving behind the younger one, bearing its stony burden, to wait for her Doctor's return. She didn't have long to wait, for he returned from studying the village minutes later, the disc at his elbow fit to bursting with recordings. He entered to find Alpha waiting for him and was instantly on guard. Who was it that had come into his TARDIS while he was away? But that was an easy question to answer, for there was a sticky note attached to the front of the rock and on the note, in his handwriting, was his full, true name spelled out in the swirling language of his people. A language none of the people below yet spoke.

He took up the rock and studied it carefully, even as his excitement began to chatter away at the back of his mind. Because…because he knew what this was. It was the start of a circular paradox. And he would only have started the paradox if it worked. It worked! He danced a small jig while the TARDIS hummed around him. "It works!" he cried, looking down at the rock in his hand.

Now he just had to figure out how.

ooOO00OOoo

The trip out was much easier than the trip back had been, and didn't require but a quarter of his attention. The Doctor used up the rest of it going over his new memories, seeing what younger him had done upon finding the rock. Thus far it looked much the same: he studied people, learned their culture, stayed at the B&B, found the Schism, and dug up the rocks. The only differences seemed to be in that he was _always_ planning on building a bridge instead of initially planning a door; digging up just Omega from the ground (since Alpha was already in his possession), and not needing to destroy Alpha to begin the loop.

Good, the paradox was stable.

His return to Gallifrey's past was a Fact, supported by the existence of the circular paradox. Now a younger version of him couldn't come along and mess it up. _This_ time was no longer in flux.

Thrilled but exhausted, the Doctor pulled the TARDIS out of active travel as soon as they cleared the traps and left her to spin lazily in the Time Vortex while he did some necessary research. The Old Girl was a beautiful old ship, and she was capable of many wondrous things. But she couldn't tap into the Vortex running through Pete's World. She couldn't travel through space and she couldn't travel through time. To compensate, he was going to need alternate transportation.

All he needed was a small two person transport. Something that could take him from Gallifrey to Earth and back without needing to refuel. He had to assume that there wasn't going to be compatible fuel sources. His overwhelming excitement urged him to go faster _fasterfasterfaster_ because he was _so close_ to seeing Rose again. But he wasn't protected by a circular paradox here, and he _had_ to do this right.

He found what he was looking for in a 2X932. Not the prettiest of ships (it certainly was no TARDIS) it nonetheless was fast enough for his needs and even had enough storage space for the extra fuel he planned on bringing with him. Then there was the food and water and other necessities. Assuming the distances were the same from one universe to another, it would only take about a week to make it to Rose. But still. A week with nothing to do.

Frankly, the whole ship buying process was an exercise in frustration and patience. The TARDIS gave him such freedom. He didn't have to pay for licensing or registrations. He wasn't required to get a pass to pilot her, and no one could pin him down and write him a ticket for speeding in flight zones. Still, he persevered and in (relatively) short order, found himself in possession of his first non-TARDIS spaceship in…ever.

He materialized around the ship in an interesting stretch of his faculties that required eighth dimensional folding, and promptly faded away again before the red tape brigade showed up and tried to cordon off the TARDIS for study.

He carefully considered at which time he should cross over to Pete's World. Rose and her mother were both listed among the dead at Canary Wharf. Mickey had long been put on the list of the missing. But with this bridge a permanent fixture in the universe now, he would be able to pass back and forth freely. Rose could visit her Mum in Pete's World _and _still maintain her relationship with Shireen in this one. But if she did want to pick back up with Shireen, well, better there be a good reason for having been listed among the dead, shouldn't there? And what better reason than long-term amnesia? That would help explain away the years she'd spent with him, as well. She'd aged with him while not moving in time with the 21st century.

Which was why the Doctor set the TARDIS down on the bridge a year and a half after the events of Canary Wharf. He didn't like the idea of leaving her alone so long, but this gave her the best chance to have a normal life back on this Earth. If she wanted it.

Shaking free of his thoughts, the Doctor unloaded the ship, double and triple checking that he had everything. Then he went back inside for one more word. "Well, Old Girl. This is it. Two weeks, three at the max, and I will be back here with Rose Tyler, if she'll have me. Wish me luck!"

There was no response, but he didn't expect one. He exited his lonely TARDIS for what he hoped was the last time. From now on, he would have a hand to hold.

It was finally time.

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: My lovely beta has just finished with the epilogue. So you're going to start getting two chapters a week. Hold onto your hats, kiddos!


	10. Chapter 9

The Doctor parked his ship outside London proper, concealing it behind a rather oversized hedge. He'd had to install a cloaking feature, and as this ship was more a personal cruiser than a fighter, it didn't take to the technology too well. It…flickered. So, hedge it was.

After that, it was as easy as catching a train into town. He looked forward to having that conversation with Rose. After much crying and laughing and hugging (and kissing?) she would look up at him with that tongue touched smile he loved so much and say, "How did you do it, Doctor? You said impossible!"

And he would shrug casually and brush it off with a, "Not a big fan of impossible. Besides, catching a train isn't _that_ tough."

And she would scowl and laugh and not take him seriously until –

"LAST STOP AT WHITE CASTLE. EVERYONE PLEASE EXIT THROUGH THE NEAREST DOOR."

The Doctor jerked abruptly out of his fantasy and back to reality. He stood with the others and slowly shuffled out the doors, scowling the whole way. On future trips, he was not going to park so far away. Maybe he could find a way of enabling the TARDIS to access this world's Vortex. Or maybe he could simply fly her through space. She wouldn't have the energy drain associated with trying to access an incompatible Vortex then. He'd have to work on it when they got back.

The shove of the crowd pushed him away from the edge of the platform and towards the walls where he found himself plastered up against a television screen projecting the breaking news of a destroyed eighteen-wheeled tractor trailer on a major highway, burning merrily away and blocking all four lanes of traffic. Not something the Doctor cared to know about on his best day (who needs a traffic update when he could just disappear _here_ and reappear _there_?") and today was certainly not his best day. He was in _Pete's World_ in _London_ and who-knew-how-many-minutes away from seeing Rose again. Everything else was secondary.

His excitement kept building as he got closer and closer. Where was she now? Was she at work? Did she get off soon? Maybe she was playing hookey and would be there when he arrived. Maybe she'd even answer the door! Scenarios and plans ran through his mind. _First thing I'm doing when I see her again is give her a kiss, _he decided. Even without words, that should make his position perfectly clear. He bound out of the taxi, shoved a wad of cash at the driver, and hurtled up the steps of the huge mansion Pete Tyler owned. Even if Rose no longer lived with her parents, she was a twenty-something year old woman after all, Jackie would undoubtedly know where she was.

He knocked on the door, rang the bell, then knocked again, bouncing uncontrollably on his heels, a grin splitting his face almost in half. Rose! _RoseRoseRoseRose…_

Jackie Tyler opened the door with puffy eyes, a runny nose, and a handkerchief pressed to the lower half of her face. When she saw who it was, she burst into tears.

"Jackie? Don't cry, Jackie. Look, it's me! The Doctor! I made it back!" his smile wilted a little under the force of her tears, but didn't vanish entirely.

When that only made her cry harder, the Doctor let himself in and closed the door.

"Jacks?" a male voice called from the other room. "Who is it? Tell 'em to just go away, love."

There was something wrong with that voice, something thick…the Doctor put one arm around the sobbing Jackie and led her into the room the male was in. Pete Tyler sat on one half of a loveseat, watching the same news program the Doctor had become so intimately acquainted with in the subway. At the sound of their entry, he turned to look, his eyes widening when he caught sight of the Doctor.

A frisson of fear ran down the Doctor's spine and the smile dropped off his face entirely. Pete was crying, too.

"What is it?" the Doctor asked, gently seating Jackie on the loveseat where she was instantly wrapped in her husband's arms. "What's happened?"

Pete shot a glance at the tv. "Rose…"

The world slowed to a crawl. Pete's eye blinks turned to minutes, the slow track of one tear down his face, an hour. When the Doctor realized what he was doing, he pulled on the threads of time even harder, slowing time further. Anything to keep out the drone of the television and its cruel reporter.

"…scene of a horrible accident. The tanker hit an obstruction in the road and flipped over, mowing down the cars in front of it as it tumbled end over end. We have reports of over twenty injuries and at least three fatalities, one of which is the famed Vitex heiress-"

The television switched off, cutting away before the words could be spoken. The Doctor's face felt stiff, and as he turned his head away from the now silent screen, he knew that he was moving like a robot.

"How long?" he asked woodenly. "How long has it been?"

Pete answered while his wife curled further into his arms, "We'd only just got the call. She was on her way home from work. She-"

Jackie let out a sharp wail and suddenly pulled herself out of Pete's arms and hurled herself at the frozen Doctor. He tried to catch her, but his reaction time was shot. And she didn't want to be caught anyway.

"You!" she shrieked, latching onto his lapels. "You're a Time Lord! You've got a time machine! You can stop this!"

"I can't-"

"Yes, you can! Just jump in that box of yours and show up yesterday! She wouldn't have gone to work if you were here."

"Jackie, I _can't_-"

"You can! Just go! Go, _go,_ GO!" she shoved him away from her and back towards the door. Her chest was heaving and her eyes held a mad glint.

The Doctor stood there, hands dangling uselessly at his sides, all his emotions drained out of him like someone had punched a hole in the base of his skull. "I can't," he repeated again calmly. Too calmly. "I'm part of events, now. I can't change something once I've already experienced it. I could wipe myself out of existence. Rose is beyond my reach."

"But you said getting here was impossible! And look where you are!"

"This isn't the same, Jackie. If I go back and try to save her, then I could cease to exist. And so could she. We both will _never have existed_. I CAN'T SAVE HER!" The helpless anger erupted from his chest, a burning maelstrom of grief and shock. His reaction stunned her silent.

"You don't understand, Jackie. You don't know. The things I've done, the things I've seen. Just-" he choked. "Just to see her again. I built a bridge. _Built _a bridge. I went a million, billion, _trillion_ years into my people's past. Back to the point where this world diverged from my own, and I built a bridge from there to here. So I could see her. So you could see her. So she would never have to choose between us. I defied countless laws of time, risked _catastrophic_ damage to the cosmos…all for the chance to say –" he closed his teeth around the phrase he would now _never_ say. He took a shaky breath, forcing calm back into his tone "If I did all that, don't you think I would save her if I could? I _can't._ I dare not."

Jackie slowly slid to the floor as her knees crumpled, a look of wide-eyed shock settling over her features. "But…"

"Jacks," Pete said, moving to sit by his wife to once more take her into his arms. "He loves her just as much as we do. If he says he can't, he can't."

Jackie stared up at the Doctor for one long moment. Then she turned and buried her face in her husband's chest. Pete bowed his head over hers, sunk his fingers deep into her hair, and together the couple cried over their lost child.

ooOO00OOoo

The funeral was brutal.

Because of the unexplained scandal of her arrival, and her status as heiress to the Vitex Corporation, Rose Tyler's death was followed closely by the media. And because he'd never been seen before, yet was obviously so close to the family, the Doctor was carefully scrutinized. Rumors about his connections to them flew wildly about, each more painful than the last.

He was Jackie's illegitimate son. He was Pete's illegitimate son. He was Rose's secret boyfriend.

She was his secret wife.

He ignored all inquiries, brushed aside every microphone. Save for the one held by the little snot who'd had the balls to ask if he'd even cared about Rose. Since he'd only come out of the woodwork to attend the funeral. Mickey had decked that one without even thinking.

Probably saved his life.

The whole day was an exquisite agony, no bit more brutal than when the preacher had gotten up and delivered a tearful eulogy about a sweet, tender, gentle person that in no way resembled his Rose Tyler. Then it was over, the public ceremony concluded, and the paparazzi left.

Then the real ceremony began.

Strangers with grim faces and plain clothes who had looked so out of place amongst the high fashion of the public ceremony closed ranks around Jackie, Pete, and Mickey, their voices soft and their grief genuine. So. These were the people of Torchwood.

They all settled down in the front two pews, huddled together as they sought strength from each other. The Doctor stood against the wall and let his eyes roam over them, memorizing the faces of those who truly cared.

Mickey got up to speak. "Right. Well then, I'm sure you all know who I am. But in case you've forgotten, I'm Mickey, Rose's best mate. Me and her and Jackie all came over from a parallel world during that cyberman mess a few years back. We were all pretty lost, and none more than Rose.

"Rose Marion Tyler. Born August 18, 1986 to Peter Tyler and Jacqueline Tyler. Her first eighteen years of life were, as she put it, 'normal and boring to the point of tears.' But everything changed for her on the day that her job blew up."

The Doctor remembered that time. He'd spent almost a year trying to come to terms with what he'd done to end the Time War. He'd just about decided to get a house in some quiet corner of the Earth and live out the remainder of that life in quiet contemplation when the TARDIS had run across the signal from the Autons. And the rest, as they say, was history. She'd been so young, then. So innocent. But, if he was being honest with himself, she'd never been innocent. Even then, she'd had the reality of life's frailty shoved upon her. But still, she managed that genuine smile he loved so much. The smile that she would now never...

The Doctor wrenched his thoughts away from that train of thought and viciously focused his attention on Mickey again. Though that wasn't exactly a good distraction from his grief.

...if she could – " Mickey broke off and cleared his throat, trying to speak even as he fought off tears. "If she could, I know that Rose would thank you all for the support you gave her. You accepted her into your ranks. You helped her find her feet. You…loved her." Tears flowed down his face now, but Mickey kept talking, his voice getting thicker with every word. "We all loved her. Everyone in this room." A few people shot glances at the Doctor, but he ignored them all as Mickey continued. "And she loved all of us. She taught us about not giving in. About doing the right thing – especially if it's not easy. About standing up and saying no. And about…never giving up…on your dreams…" Mickey made a futile effort at wiping the tears away, and took a deep, shaky breath. "Most of us have heard her talk about the Doctor. In fact, I think some of you got sick of hearing about him. 'A man,' she would say. 'The best man I've ever known.' And then she would go on to say that he was the reason she worked so hard to go back to the other world. Well. He was trying to get back here, too. And he made it. Just, one day too late. Doctor?"

Mickey gestured at the Doctor where he was using a wall to hold himself up. What did Mickey want from him? Apparently to go up there and speak. The Doctor pulled himself away from the wall and passed by Mickey to the podium on a small stand. He ignored the podium entirely and instead went straight to the coffin behind it. Until now, he'd managed to avoid the ornate box. But now….

He stared down at the closed lid for a long time. She was too blackened and burnt for it to be open. He placed one softly shaking hand upon the polished wood and rubbed his fingers over it, feeling its smooth texture. Then he leaned down and placed a lingering kiss upon it. He straightened up and refused to cry. He turned away from the coffin, looked out over the grieving faces and wondered what they expected him to say. He cast about for something, and settled on a poem by the human author W. H. Auden. He wondered fleetingly if Auden had even existed in this world, even as he began to speak.

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone." He reached out and grabbed the podium with one hand, swaying slightly where he stood. "Silence the pianos and with muffled drum…" he turned back to the coffin, "bring out the coffin, let the mourners come."

He turned away from the box that did _not_ contain Rose, no matter what they said. She was bigger than six slabs of wood and some pretty paint. He paced to the edge of the platform, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. "Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead scribbling on the sky the message 'she is dead'." He choked up then, his eyes burning from unshed tears. He breathed deep, holding on until he could speak clearly again. "Put crepe bows 'round the white necks of the public doves, let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves." He bunched his hands into tight fists and paced up and down the platform. He'd disdained the typical black for the funeral and chosen a dark blue suit instead. Blue – for mourning. "She was my North, my South, my East, my West. My…" he choked a laugh, "my Sunday rest. My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. I thought that love would last – " he cut off abruptly and stared blankly out at the crowd. Then his shoulders slumped, the fight went out of him, and the tears streamed down his face. "I thought it would last forever." He whispered, despair evident in every line of his body. "I was wrong."

He stood motionless for a long time, silent sobs wracking his frame. Eventually, Jackie got up and went to him. But when she touched his shoulder, his head snapped up and it was like a sheet of ice had slid over his features and she was chilled by the coldness in his eyes. This was a powerful man who had nothing left to lose. He took two precise steps away from her and braced his feet, folding his arms across his chest. No one there had any doubt that if he was to face a hurricane right now, the storm would lose.

He stared down the aisle, out the open back doors of the church and spoke the last few lines of the poem in a powerful voice, the tears incongruent with his body language. "The stars are not wanted now, put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep away the wood. _For nothing now can ever come to any good._"

He jumped down off the platform and stalked down the aisle, disappearing through the doors; leaving a distraught Jackie Tyler to cry alone.

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: I'm sorry.

The poem the Doctor speaks is indeed written by Audin, I just changed the "he's" to "she's" to match gender to object. Next chapter on Tuesday. Just hold on till then.


	11. Chapter 10

The Doctor was waiting for them when they all finally returned to the house. All of the people from Torchwood had been invited back for a post funeral party. If party was the right word. Some of the more brazen people sought to talk to the Doctor. To see if the things Rose had said about him were true. Mickey cut them all off.

"Not a good idea, Jennifer," Mickey said to the woman in question who had gone from sturdy and sensible to flighty in face of the Doctor's good looks.

"I just want to talk to him," she objected, glancing at the Doctor over Mickey's shoulder.

"I know. But that's not a good idea right now. You'll flirt with him – you won't mean to! But you will. Just a little. Cuz he's a handsome bloke. And then he will take your head off. Trust me, he's very big ears right now."

She shot him a confused glance, then cocked her head to the side as she considered his words. "You're right. I'll leave him alone. Thanks, Mickey."

She wandered off and Mickey turned to the Doctor, studying him for a moment. Night had fallen and the Time Lord stood before one of the great bay windows, a forgotten drink in his hand as he stared up at the stars.

"Where is it?" Mickey asked, coming to stand next to the Doctor.

"Hmm?" The Doctor never took his eyes off the sky, but he did tilt his head slightly towards Mickey to show that he was listening.

"The TARDIS. Where is it?"

The Doctor paused, and his gaze on the sky turned calculating. Then he pointed at the floor, his arm forming a slight angle so a line drawn from the tip of his finger wouldn't _quite_ pass through the Earth's core.

Mickey's gaze followed the hand until he was blinking in confusion at the linoleum. "It's underground?"

"No." The Doctor dropped his hand and took a sip of his drink. "The bridge is just in the stars on the other side of the planet. Wrong part of the night sky. Six months from now I could point out the galaxy for you. But the sun is in the way right now."

"Wait, if the TARDIS is on the bridge, how did you get here?" Mickey asked.

The Doctor lifted one shoulder in approximation of a shrug. "Same way all the other aliens do. By starship."

Mickey scoffed lightly. "Hard to imagine you in a starship, mate. You and that box have always been together."

"Yes." The Doctor said, his voice gentle. "We have."

There was a pause, then Mickey rounded on the Doctor, his face intent. "Take me with you."

That managed to pull the Doctor's attention away from the sky, and he stared at Mickey with wide eyes. "What?"

"When you go. Take me with you," Mickey said earnestly.

"What about your grandmother? Didn't you stay to be with her?"

"Yeah. But Gran passed away a few months back. Jackie's all married with another kid, and with Rose gone – well. There's nothing for me here anymore. So. Take me with you?"

"Mickey…I don't really want any company right now." The Doctor said reluctantly.

"I know. I knew that when I asked. What? Don't look so surprised, 's all over your face. I'm not asking to travel with you. I just want a ride back. See?"

"Yes." The Doctor nodded his head slowly. "Yes, I see. I can do that. Mickey," he clapped the other man on his shoulder. "I'll take you home."

ooOO00OOoo

They stayed a few days more, giving Mickey the chance to pack up a few things and say goodbye properly. Then they were on their way. The trip back was a little awkward because it was painfully obvious that Mickey was not the intended passenger, and also that the Doctor had held high hopes for his first few days spent with Rose. It was with relief on both their parts that the Doctor dropped Mickey off at Cardiff. Though Mickey had something to say on the matter.

"Cardiff! Why Cardiff? I wanted London!"

"Yes, well. You forget Mickey, you've been missing for almost five years. Can't just expect to waltz back into society and pick up a job. There'll be questions."

"And there won't be in Cardiff?" Mickey asked dubiously.

The Doctor shrugged. "I know a guy." Then his gaze turned sly. "So do you."

"Me?" Mickey scoffed. "Five years, remember?"

"Yes. Now off you trot."

"What?" Mickey shrieked as the Doctor put hands to his shoulder blades and pushed him towards the door. "But you haven't told me anything! Who's the guy you know? How do I find him? D-Doctor!"

The Doctor gave Mickey some extra oomph just as they reached the door to the TARDIS and Mickey stumbled upon touching pavement. He turned around to find the Doctor lounging in the doorway.

"Just hang about. He'll find you," the Time Lord said, and moved to close the doors.

"Now, hang on!" Mickey objected, putting a hand out to stop them from closing.

"You'll be fine!" The Doctor insisted dismissively. "Have fun!" Then he shut the doors in Mickey's face.

"Why you rotten – hey! I'm talking to you!" Mickey raised a fist to beat on the doors, but the dematerialization sequence had begun and his fist hit nothing but air. The TARDIS faded back in, then out a few more times before vanishing entirely.

"Ain't that just like him." Mickey muttered angrily, staring at the place the TARDIS used to be. " 'Just hang out,' he says. 'He'll find you,' he says. What a bunch of – "

"Mickey? Mickey Smith?"

Mickey turned to see a familiar figure stepping off a street corner towards him. "Well! If it isn't Captain Tight Pants!"

The two embraced briefly. Then the Captain grabbed Mickey by the shoulders, held him at arms length, and gave him a once over. "Look'n good there," he said with a leer.

"Hey, none of that." Mickey took a step back, pointing a finger at the Captain reprovingly. "What are you doing here? I thought you'd be off schmoozing the ladies somewhere. Or the guys."

"I could say the same of you! The Doc told me that you and Rose were in a parallel world! Is that why he didn't stick around? Him and Rose having 'private time'?" Jack wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

And suddenly Mickey knew why the Doctor had been so keen to get Mickey out the doors quickly. "Coward," Mickey mumbled. "_Such_ a coward."

"What's that?" Jack asked, slinging an arm around Mickey's shoulders and leading them back the way he'd come.

Mickey shook his head and braced himself for the conversation to come. "About Rose…"

ooOO00OOoo

So, I realized that I'll be out of town Saturday when you're supposed to be getting the next chapter. So you'll get it Thursday instead. But you'll still have to wait for the following Tuesday to get the one after!


	12. Chapter 11

Author's Note: Oh, look! A nice, long chapter for once, to tie you over. Little appreciation would be nice. See you Tuuuesdaay!

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor landed the TARDIS with a significant bump, the old nuts and bolts groaning in protest over the long flight. He stepped out and looked across the lawn to the big house sitting back from the road. The sound of a child laughing made him turn around just in time to catch young Tony Tyler as he hurled himself at the Doctor's knees.

"Doctor!" the child shrieked and tried to climb up the Time Lord's legs.

"Hey! Tony!" The Doctor reached down and scooped the boy up from under his arms, propping him on a hip. "You been good for your Mum?"

"No!" the boy screamed, and blew a raspberry.

The Doctor looked around cautiously, then leaned in and tapped the boy on the nose with one finger. "Good."

"_I heard that." _Jackie came around the corner of the TARDIS in comfortable clothes covered in grass stains, and a happy smile. "Why must you encourage him? He already wants a blue box of his own when he grows up."

"Ah, well. Can't blame him, can you? He's got good taste." The Doctor and Jackie began to walk back to the house, while Tony put his head down on the Doctor's shoulder, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

"You've got good timing." Jackie told him quietly when it became apparent that Tony had every intention of napping on the Doctor's shoulder.

"Yeah?" the Doctor asked, knowing the answer but playing along all the same. It was a sort of game between them. He was 'in the neighborhood' for Tony's birthday, Rose's birthday, and the Tyler's wedding anniversary to take little Tony off their hands. 'Since it's been so long since I've seen my namesake!' he'd always say. They had a sitter, of course, but the Doctor wouldn't hear of it. If it was a special occasion or significant date, he would be there. Other times, he would be around as often as possible. He refused to lose this one last connection to Rose, however indirect it may be.

And once a year, on the anniversary of Rose's death, he would park on the lawn at precisely 2 pm, walk up to the house, and join the Tylers on their trip to visit Rose. He always wore the blue suit then.

"Where's Donna this time, then?" Jackie asked as they worked together to lay Tony down without waking him up.

"A planet called Midnight." The Doctor closed the door behind them and they made their way downstairs. "She said she wanted to relax some. Tired of running. So I figured I'd pop over for a visit."

"Where does she think you are?"

"Moving the TARDIS. I 'accidentally' landed in a no parking zone. I'll go back a few minutes after I left."

"You're a devious man," Jackie said, pulling him into a hug. "I'm glad you're here." She opened the door to the den. "Go ahead, I just gotta freshen up."

The Doctor entered the den and found Pete watching television.

"Doctor!" he said, getting up to shake hands. "Back again I see."

"Yup!"

The two men sat together in companionable silence while they waited for Jackie to shower and change. There was a knock on the door, then it opened as whoever it was let themselves in. A petite brunette stuck her head in the room and addressed Pete. "I'm here. I'll go up and check on Tony."

"Thank you, Catherine." Pete replied.

She switched her attention to the Doctor. "Hello again, Mr. Smith." Then she disappeared up the stairs.

A pause.

"Same baby sitter for five years?"

Pete shrugged. "Tony likes her. So does Jackie."

"But she's in college now, surely?"

Pete shrugged again. "She is. Only babysits for us now." He shot a look at the Doctor who was staring at the tv with too much intensity. "She does it for you, y'know. She fancies you."

The Doctor gave a deep sigh and slumped down on the couch, closing his eyes. "I was afraid you'd say that."

Pete opened his mouth to respond, but Jackie breezed into the room just then, her arms overflowing with flowers. "All right then, gents! We ready?"

"Yes!" The Doctor said, springing from the couch as if it had bitten him.

They traveled to the cemetery together, Pete driving while Jackie fiddled with the radio. The Doctor sat in the back and stared silently out the window. They approached the grave together. Jackie laid the flowers out, while the Doctor pulled a bundle of exotic flowers from his pocket. They were miraculously undamaged. The first time he'd done it, Pete had gaped and asked where they'd come from. The Doctor and Jackie's in chorus answer of 'bigger on the inside' had brought laughter to the somber occasion. Now, they just accepted it as part of the ceremony.

They all stared at the headstone in silence, studying the words carved into its surface

Rose Marion Tyler

Daughter, Sister, Loved one.

And then, in careful script, someone had added one more line:

Stuff of legend.

Jackie began first, talking about Tony and how he was progressing. How he still sometimes asked about Rose, and how it broke Jackie's heart every time. But things were good, too. The Doctor stopped by often, treated Tony as if he were his brother. So she could rest easy. Her family was taken care of.

Then Pete spoke. He told amusing anecdotes about the things that went on in Torchwood. About how they'd tracked down the last of the Cybermen last week. The people at work still spoke fondly of her from time to time. But they were all holding up well. So no need to worry, the Earth was still defended.

Then it was the Doctor's turn.

The words came slowly, he was still unused to sharing, could only do so in the guise of talking to a tombstone. But he had learned after the first time that it made the burden of his age easier. Just a little.

"Went to The Library. Specifically The Library. Biggest one in the galaxy. So big they didn't need a name for it. Just a big 'ole 'The' in front of it. Got a call on the psychic paper that led me there. So I went. Course I went. Brought Donna along. Thought the super temp might like to see world-sized filing in person. Almost had another day like when we met Jack. Almost. I lost a few. All from the archeological crew who'd come to study the empty library. Hundred years previous, every visitor and employee had vanished. Turns out The Library had been infested with Vashta Nerada. They all tried to teleport away at the same time and had frozen the system. The computer had saved them as data on the hard drive. I got them all out. But..not all the archeologists. And not…the person who called me.

"River. Her name was River Song. She…Rose, she knew my name. My _name_. I can't even speak my name except – and she knew it. Whispered it in my ear. What that means…I wish I could say that I couldn't see it, but I can.

"She's smart, Rose. Smart like you…were. Got a bit more of a mouth on her, though. She says the most outrageous things. I'm…I'm going to be seeing more of her. She's got this journal. Blue, with panels. Like the TARDIS. Called it her diary. Her past, my future. We're living in opposite directions. Have to say, that's a new one. Not too keen on it, if I'm honest. But I don't see as how I have much of a choice. She's already lived it. If I don't, well. The River I met won't ever exist. Nice little temporal loop, this.

"I learned a new trick. Well, I mean its not a trick. Not really. Turns out I don't even need a key to the TARDIS. My companions still do, of course. No getting around that. But I can open the doors with a snap of my fingers. Didn't really believe River when she said that. But she is right. Was right. I just met her, she's dead, and I'm going to meet her again in my future. You're right. Tenses do get weird around me.

"…I miss you. Even now, after two hundred years.

"I miss you still."

ooOO00OOoo

The next time he visited, he was on his own. Pete, Jackie, and little Tony were going to the zoo. He'd been invited along. Of course he had. But fond as he was of them – and wasn't that just a little frightening, admitting he was fond of Jackie Tyler – he'd come back to see Rose.

"Hi," he said, with an awkward little hand wiggle. Like she could actually see him. "Your family is at the zoo. Tony is eight and really has a fondness for tigers. Talked to Pete some before they left. This Earth is doing fine. Doesn't seem to have suffered any for not having my grubby fingerprints all over it. In fact, it might be better off. There aren't any super-secret agencies banking on my ability to show up and rescue them…

"I've not seen her again. River, I mean. But it's hard to say when I will. I've got the potential to live another four thousand Gallifreyan years. Assuming I don't burn through my regenerations quickly like I did with my ninth self.

"Donna's going to leave soon. She doesn't know it yet, but she will. I'll make sure of it. Remember last time, when I told you about The Library? Didn't exactly tell you everything. Not been smacked by Jackie yet in this body, and I don't really want to. See, I sorta lost Donna for a while. Tried to teleport her to the TARDIS and she ended up in limbo with the rest of the people from The Library. The main computer, CAL, had set up a sort of virtual world for the people to live in. Donna met Lee there, and well…she fell in love. So I made sure they met up in real life once everyone was out. Don't want another you and me. They're on a date right now. Figure I'll 'accidentally' land back in Lee's time after each of our adventures. Then, when they start staring deeply into each other's eyes, I'll come back here. Don't think I could withstand that much domesticity in one place, even in this body."

The Doctor stopped and stared up at the sun-dappled branches above his head. "I miss you still. I shouldn't. It's been so long. But I keep coming back. For you its been, what? A few months since I was here last? For me, it's been ten years. Donna doesn't know how much time I spent doing other things when I 'just bring the TARDIS round'. I want to stretch out the time I've got with her. I haven't had a family in so long. Certainly never a sister. She's loud and obnoxious and you'd love her. And she, you. Then again, everyone loved you." He squatted down and traced the inscription he'd left. "I _miss_ you. I'm beginning to suspect that I always will." He left her flowers and walked away, hands sunk deep into his pockets.

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor approached Rose's grave. For once not clad in the blue of mourning. Instead he was in his tuxedo of doom, with black converse. "Donna and Lee got married!" He chirped, flinging himself down on the grass of her grave and propping himself up on her tombstone. "Just now, in fact. I danced. It was fun! Dunno what I had against it before. I was too stuffy back then. Why you put up with me, I'll never know." He tilted his head back and closed his eyes a small, peaceful smile floating around the edges of his lips. "I got them a present. Course I did. Thought about a lottery ticket but, well… They have to live in Lee's time. He _can't_ go live in the past. He's not trained for it. Not like Jack is. So I gave them a super computer like your super phone, so she can video call her parents whenever she wants. I'll take them both back to see her mum and granddad from time to time. Not gonna abandon Donna. Still, the TARDIS won't be the same without her. Lost another one. Even if I made it happen, it still hurts."

He sat there for the rest of the day, lazily drowsing in the sunlight. Right before the sun set, he got up, brushing away the grass and leaves that stuck to his jacket. He pulled her flowers out and laid them gently on her grave.

"I miss you, still."

ooOO00OOoo

This time, when the Doctor approached Rose's grave, he bore no floral offering, and he was looking distinctly worse for wear. He sat down gingerly, and leaned against her headstone as if he was feeling every one of his thousand-plus years. And when he closed his eyes, it was with a look of weariness, not peace. It took him several minutes to sort everything out. To organize his thoughts and emotions into a coherent whole. He needed this place. The quiet tranquility of Rose's grave gave him the space to voice his thoughts, especially since he dare not do it anywhere else. Here, in this alternate world that he could never call home and would never need him, he had found a measure of peace.

"I saw Davros again. Never. Never, never, never did I expect to cross paths with him again. I saw his ship fly into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. But he survived. Rescued by Dalek Caan. Who, and I still don't know how, made it through the temporal Lock around the Time War. Something about that made him go insane, little wonder there, and his loyalties switched from the perpetuation of the Dalek race to their destruction. In true Dalek form, though, a million lives had to be lost first. They created a reality bomb. Least that's what they called it. It was actually a hyper-conduction coil fed by negative neurons that bombarded the dark matter at the subatomic level and managed to break it up in such a way that it caused a cascading chain reaction in every bit of matter everywhere. It even crossed the boundaries of universes. In fact, it did that first. Crossed over into this universe and was breaking up stars, moons, planets...all on a subatomic level. I stopped by to see you, and Pete came to me. 'The stars are going out,' he said, 'and it's coming from your universe.' Sneaky bastard had been scanning me with found alien tech while my back was turned. He's managed to work out the difference between the makeup of my world and his, just using those scans." The Doctor shook his head. "Now I know where you got your scary good intelligence.

"I'm pretty sure he never thought to point that scanner at his wife. Wouldn't have worked on her anyway. She's taken on the place of this world's Jackie Tyler, and her makeup has altered to fit. ...so Pete tells me that the stars are going out, and I go back to look into it. Should have just stayed here. Turns out, all of the missing planets I'd heard about lately: the moon of Poosh, Clom, even the breeding planet for the Adipose babies, they were all part of a massive focusing array. All part of the reality bomb. I went to the Earth to get Jack's help only to discover that it had been taken, too.

"The Daleks had hidden the twenty-seven planets they'd stolen half a second out of sync with the rest of the universe. Harriet Jones gave her life to get me there. Once on Earth, I put the TARDIS out of sync – learned my lesson with the Master – and met up with Jack. Everyone had gathered at his little underground base in Cardiff. Mickey was there. He's engaged to Martha! You wouldn't recognize him, Rose. He's grown into a man. And a valuable part of the team, according to Jack. Sarah Jane asked after you. I couldn't…couldn't say… I told her to ask Jack.

"A Dalek tried to attack the hub, but one of their computer geniuses had figured out how to get a small scale temporal freeze going. She'd fitted it over the door and it froze the Dalek in time. I went in and managed to disassemble the battle armor. Found the wave Davros was using to tie all his Daleks together for the com-link. And since he had so kindly bragged that he'd offered his body up to them, well. It wasn't so hard to build a device to do to them what the reality bomb was doing to the stars.

"I took my gun, went to the Crucible and…I used it. Rose, I didn't even hesitate. Once again, I am guilty of genocide. This is the third time. How many _times…_

"I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired of picking up the pieces. Every time they get smaller and smaller. There are bits of me that don't even fit anymore. I'm held together with spit and bits of string.

"Something's coming. Something bad. And I don't have a hand to hold. The Ood…

"I miss you, still."

ooOO00OOoo

The TARDIS materialized on the lawn of the mansion in the same place it always did. Across the grass, three figures emerged from the doorway, talking and laughing as they approached the strange blue lawn ornament.

"Doctor!" one of them cried, pounding a fist on the door.

"Yes! I'm coming! Just give me a moment…" The Doctor flung open the doors and popped his head out, a thousand-watt smile gracing his features. "Tony Tyler!" the Doctor stepped out and embraced the young man, brushing two air kisses over each of his cheeks. "Pete!" he shook the man's hand vigorously before moving on to, "Jackie! Lovely as ever I see."

"What?" Tony said, stumbling away with a look of confusion.

"Oh, you," Jackie said, "no better this time 'round."

"Jacks, who…?" Pete said, clearly baffled.

"Well, it's Himself, isn't it? Gone and changed his face again. I told you he could." She elbowed her husband and son. "And you two didn't believe me."

"What, you mean this is the Doctor?" Tony asked, pointing incredulously at the man who had emerged from the TARDIS and was now standing there with his thumbs tucked into suspenders.

Floppy hair. Too-short trousers. Bowtie.

"_You're…?"_ Pete asked.

"That's me! I'm the Doctor!" The man waved, then ran a hand through his hair. "What do you think?"

"You're…so…" Pete's words failed him.

"Yeah." Tony agreed.

"Oh, don't mind them, love." Jackie stepped up and linked an arm through the Doctor's and led him away. "They just didn't think that you could really change your face. Silly sods."

The Doctor reached up and adjusted his bowtie.

"Come along! The driver won't wait forever!" Jackie called over her shoulder and the two men snapped into action, hurrying along after Jackie and the new, new, new Doctor.

"Hello, Rose!" The Doctor said, jumping out from behind a tree as if at a surprise party. He was alone again, as he usually was when he visited Rose. "Sorry it's been a while. Busy doing stuff. You know. Seen River Song, ohh…dozens of times now." The Doctor leaned forward and whispered to the headstone. "Naughty girl." He clapped his hands and straightened, rubbing his palms together in glee. "So! Where are we? Ah, yes! The Ponds got married. They're on their honeymoon. Don't really want to tag along for that. Though I think I may have to. They're almost as jeopardy friendly as you." He clasped his hand together behind his back and paced back and forth as he spoke.

"Donna's pregnant. A boy and a girl. Twins! Love twins. She screamed when she saw my face. I may have forgotten to tell her about regeneration." He paused in his pacing as a thought occurred to him. "River Song wasn't surprised by my different faces. I wonder how many of my faces she knows?" He shook himself. "Don't get me wrong. I still miss you. But River, she's special.

"So very special."

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor was wearing a stetson. He took it off as he approached the grave. He had no words. Not this time. He was going to his death. He had just one last thing to do before he met with the Ponds. Out of the pocket of his jacket he pulled a small, hand held laser. Studying the stone , he squatted down and applied the laser to the marker. With a steady hand and a careful eye, he traced lines across its surface, gently curving them into circles. Stroke after stroke he built the words, carving them deep. When he was done, he stepped back and, placing her flowers on the exact center of her grave, he walked off.

Behind him, written in the graceful circular script of his people, was five words. Five words infused with all the sincerity and timelessness only a Time Lord could manage.

I love you. Good bye.

ooOO00OOoo

The fires from the crash were still burning merrily when, a universe away, Rose Tyler opened her eyes.


	13. Chapter 12

"Again, Rose. Who is the Doctor?"

Rose, tied gently but firmly to a chair, blinded by the bright light in her eyes, answered the voice. "Love 'im."

"Good. And? What is the Doctor?"

"Time Lord," Rose slurred. She was tired, they'd woken her up far too early to bring her in here just to ask her the same questions over and over. "Time Lord? No, no! Not Time Lord!" She flinched away as the light changed from simple white to mauve. Mauve meant danger.

"No," the voice said without compassion. "Not Time Lord. _Enemy._"

"No! No!" Rose shrieked. Unsure anymore if she was objecting to the labeling of the Doctor as the enemy or the horrible creeping, itching sensation in her arms and legs. Low level electric currents were being run through her body, cramping the muscles by tiny, agonizing increments.

"Why are you here, Rose?"

She leaned into the chair, trying to get away from the voice. She turned her head, arching her back in a futile effort to merge with the hardwood behind her.

"Why are you here, Rose?"

Rose whimpered and switched tactics. Now she was curling in on herself, hunching her shoulders and trying to tuck her head away. It was always like this. They didn't torture her. Not really. There was no branding or thumb screws. No knives or hammers or the oh-so-creative Chinese water torture. They were always upfront and honest with her.

When she'd come to oh, so many days ago, it was to see unfamiliar faces staring down at her. Only one of them had spoken. An older woman with curly hair, dark lipstick, and an eyepatch. 'Call me Madam,' she'd said. 'I'm going to break you, Rose Tyler. Then I'm going to put you back together. And then _you're_ going to kill the Doctor.' When Rose had objected, said she loved the Doctor and would never hurt him, Madam had leaned forward and smiled gently at Rose. 'Wonderful,' she stroked back hair from Rose's face. 'I was hoping it was love.' Then she'd pulled out a gun and shot Rose through the heart.

Her return to consciousness had seen her strapped into this self-same chair, possessing the body of a five year old, but the mind of a twenty-six year old. Then, as now, there was a light in her face. Then, as now, they asked her three questions. 'Who is the Doctor?' 'What is the Doctor?' 'Why are you here?'

"Why are you here, Rose Tyler?" Madam asked implacably, showing neither impatience or frustration in her voice. "Who is responsible for making you the target of our attentions? _Why are you here, Rose Tyler?"_

"No! Please don't!" Rose cried, shaking her head wildly from side to side. Everyday they did this. Made her give them the answers they wanted to hear.

"Why, Rose Tyler?"

She whimpered…and cracked. Same as the day before. And the day before. She held out as long as she could. But eventually the light hurt her eyes and the heat was too intense and she was really very thirsty and how long had it been since she'd last eaten? And the electricity crawled through her body, tensing and relaxing her muscles in unnatural patterns. Surely it wouldn't hurt to say it? It wouldn't make it true.

"The Doctor." Rose said in her little girl voice.

"Good. Very good, Rose Tyler. Say it again. Who put you here?"

"The Doctor," Rose repeated in a stronger voice. It was always easier the second time.

"Wonderful. See? That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Rose shook her head, sighing in relief when the mad itch from the electricity shut off and the locks on her arms and legs were released. She staggered to her feet, her knees unsteady, and leaned against the wall. Anything to be out of that chair.

Beyond the bright circle of the light, Rose could see Madam approaching her.

"Are you alright, Sweetie?" Madam wrapped her in her arms, sincere concern in her tone. "Oh! You're shaking!" Madam led her from the room and down the hallway of the comfortable house they lived in. "Come. We've got a masseuse waiting for you, and then a hot bath. You did good today! Only half an hour. A few more weeks and you won't be hesitating at all."

Her words were so kind and her arms so soft and welcoming. There was no deception in Madam. When Madam said that she did good, she meant it. And there was something maternal in the way she cared for her. Ensuring that she ate enough vegetables, coming in at night to hold her when the nightmares got bad…and there was something in Rose that soaked it up. Even as the rapidly dwindling voice in the back of her mind shrieked that it was wrong. She cuddled closer to Madam and told it to shut up.

They entered the massage parlor and Madam lifted her up on the table, offering her two pills to help with any pain that might develop from the strained muscles. With it came a glass of chocolate milk. Usually, she wasn't allowed chocolate milk. But Madam passed it over with a wink and a whispered comment of, "Our secret."

She accepted the glass with a giggle and downed it, and the pills.

The door opened. "Now that's what I like to hear! Laughter." Anna, the redhead masseuse came in with her typical smile. "So it went well today, I gather?"

"Yup! Half an hour!" She chirruped, then froze. Something dark and wild inside of her had _howled…_

"Hey, it's okay to feel proud of your accomplishments," Anna came over and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. "We knew this would be hard going in. But if you just stick with it, you'll be stronger in the end."

Unsure if she should hug Anna in gratitude, or spit in her face, she settled for nodding dumbly.

"All right, then. Let's see what we can do about these arms and legs, shall we?" Anna turned away to gather her things.

"Okay, Sweetie." Madam gave her a quick hug. "I'm going to start lunch. Your bath will be ready when you're done here."

She nodded again and Madam kissed her forehead.

"I am so proud of you." Then Madam turned and left the room.

"Here we go!" Anna came around the end of the table, warming oil between her hands. "Left arm first!"

She pushed the sleeve of her shirt up to her shoulder and lifted her arm.

ooOO00OOoo

The sound of powerful kicks and punches hitting a target was overlaid by the questions being hurled through the air

"Who is the Doctor?"

"Lover."

"What is the Doctor?"

"Enemy."

"Why are you here?"

"To kill the Doctor."

"What do you want for dinner?"

She stopped her assault on the bag and turned to stare at Madam, who was smiling at her. "Pizza!" She ran over and threw herself into Madam's arms.

"Ohh! You're too big for this now!" Madam said, giving up on attempting to swing her around.

She was eight now, and her time was almost done here, her conditioning complete.

"Come on, Sweetie. I've got something to show you."

She followed Madam down several hallways until they stepped outside a plain metal door with 'R&D' carved into its surface. "Research and Development?" she asked with a tinge of excitement. "You said I wasn't allowed!"

Madam tapped her on the nose with one finger. "That's because we were making you a surprise! And now it's ready. Go see!"

She dashed through the doors then skidded to a halt, her face flush with excitement. "A spacesuit!"

ooOO00OOoo

She was breathing hard. Trapped inside the Spaceman, she felt like she couldn't get enough air. Cocooned inside its heavy mesh and layers of fabric, she was cut off from everyone. Unable to touch her own skin, she was detached even from herself.

"Help!" she cried, frantically clawing at the straps over her chest with stubby fingers. "Somebody help me!"

"Now, stop that!" Madam said harshly. "You need this, to protect you. So stop fighting it."

"But I can't breath! He ate me! He ate me! The Spaceman ate me!" She was panicking. She didn't understand what was going on, the heavy crush scrambled her brains, brought out a fear from the Before Time. Before Madam. Before the Three Questions. A fear of a violent wind that would pull her into an endless black and then crush her. As she was being crushed now. "Oh god! Oh god, somebody save me!" She was caught. Lost in hazy memories that had not lost their power over her for being indistinct. "Where is he? Where did he go! You can't!" She thrashed about, and they were forced to restrain her, tie her down to a table even as she was contained within the suit. It only increased her dementia. "We have to leave! We can't leave him! He's gone! Where-oh god! It came with us! Save me from the devil! Somebody…where are you? Doctor!"

A blow to her head rattled her bad enough that her head lolled sickeningly to the side and for a moment, they thought they'd killed her. Again. The visions in her head left and when she came around she was free from the Spaceman. But it was across the room, being worked on by the R&D team, and when she saw it splayed open, waiting for her, a cold fear settled over her. Movement to the right drew her attention and she saw Madam.

"Mam!" She cried, and hurled herself at the woman, seeking comfort. But Madam sidestepped the move and allowed her to hit the ground, hard. "Ma…Madam?" She said softly, utterly lost.

Madam gave her a harsh stare. "You _will_ go back into that suit. You _will_ behave. And you _will_ kill the Doctor." Then she turned and left. Shortly thereafter, the R&D team left as well, leaving her alone with the Spaceman. She shivered and looked around, carefully avoiding the corner where the empty, for now, suit lay. They'd moved locations while she was unconscious. No longer in the space station, it appeared that they had taken up residence inside of a house.

She huddled in the corner of the room for hours, positioned in such a way that she could keep one eye on the spacesuit and one on the door. Her fear of it was irrational, she knew that. But that didn't stop the quaking when she thought of having to go back inside it. Something in her deeply feared it; it was almost instinctual. And without being able to remember _why_ she feared it, how could she control it? Since the change, she needed less sleep than she had (but how did she know it was less? She remembered nothing of the Before Time.) and so was still wide awake when the visitors came.

A man stepped in, wringing his hands and looking around as if afraid of his own shadow, followed by strange mouthless creatures wearing business suits as if it was natural for a person to look that grotesque. She screamed and bolted. But one of the creatures caught her.

"You will, kill, the Doctor." It told her in halting monotone.

"No! No! Put me down!" She wriggled and scratched at it, too out of her mind with fear to use the techniques Madam had taught her for taking down a larger opponent.

"You _will_, kill, the _Doctor_." It hissed at her.

"Perhaps…the girl will…come…with me." The shrinking man said. "I can…take her…to her room…" he stared blankly up at the creatures. "Yes?"

The creature slowly lowered her into the man's arms and despite herself, she clung to him. Eaten by a spacesuit that brought out her worst nightmares from the Before Time, abandoned by Madam, captured by creatures...any human was comfort. Perhaps he could save her from the monsters.

He couldn't. Or wouldn't.

ooOO00OOoo

The spaceman came back. They left her inside it for hours on end, hoping to desensitize her to its touch. It only heightened her hysteria. Just seeing it would set her to screaming, and when she was removed again, she was a gibbering wreck for days on end. But they kept at it. Kept allowing the Spaceman to eat her, slowly breaking down her psyche to the point where, when she saw it, she would just retreat into herself, vanish inside her own mind and allow them to do whatever they wished with her body.

Which is how she found it. Tucked away, deep inside the recesses of her mind was a segment that glowed like concentrated starlight. A soft golden river that resisted the chains across the rest of her being. It would not be controlled, but it could not escape. It shifted and moved as if it were alive, flowing from one side of its corner to the other and back, like a pacing animal. "Hello?" she called when she got closer and the light responded. Shrinking into itself, it gained definition, a shape congealing out of its formless mass.

She came close enough to touch and was startled to recognize the form of a massive golden wolf staring in at her. "Wolf?" she said with confusion, but not fear.

BAD WOLF

The word had not come from inside the portion of her mind that she controlled; the parts wrapped in Madam's training. So it had to have been the wolf, inside its glowing prison.

"Bad…wolf…" she murmured, reaching out to touch the beautiful animal. The wolf took one tiny step forward, stretching its nose out to sniff her. Then it lifted its head, and stared intently past her at something with frighteningly intelligent eyes. She turned to look, but saw nothing but more of her mind, the links of Madam's teachings holding her together. She turned back and the wolf was staring at her. Staring, but not like she was prey. Like…

The wolf lunged suddenly, latching onto her hand with crushing jaws. She cried out and instinctively tried to pull away, but that only made it worse, the move causing sharp teeth to dig into her arm. But instead of drawing blood, the golden dust circling the wolf streamed into her wounds, lighting up her skin from the inside. "No!" She pulled again and was released.

She stumbled backwards landing harshly on her butt. The wolf and its golden light stayed outside the reach of the conditioning. She stared down at her arm and saw the light still inside her hand. It swirled gently, causing intricate lines and swirls to shine mesmerizingly across her skin in ever changing patterns. She looked back up at the wolf only to discover that it had completely dissolved again, now nothing but a flowing river of light.

"Bad. Wolf...?" She said, rubbing her hand.

She emerged from the depths of her mind and found herself, as usual, laid upon her bed in the orphanage run by the shrinking man. But her mind was a little clearer, and though she did not understand what had happened, she realized that Bad Wolf had somehow managed to remove a little of the fog from her mind. A fog that she hadn't realized was there until it had lessened. She had a feeling that Bad Wolf could help her clear out more of the fog, help her think better. But she had to get out of here first. Had to get away from the Spaceman.

She ran away. Once devoted to Madam and her mission, now she wanted nothing more than to escape. She tried for weeks to get out, but always blacked out. Getting away from the shrinking man didn't seem to be difficult, but somehow she always found herself back in her room. But one day, she did something right, and she escaped. She was so happy, so relieved. She found an abandoned warehouse to hide in and she tucked herself in between stacks of rubbish to keep warm. When she woke up, she screamed.

The Spaceman had followed her. It always followed her.

"No!" she screamed, and dashed away, running down the trash littered hallway on grimy feet. "No! Stay back! Leave me alone!"

But the Spaceman ignored her words, pacing after her with infinite patience. It wasn't as fast as she was, but it didn't need to be. She couldn't run forever, and it _always_ knew where she was. Sweaty and exhausted, she stumbled to a halt, her knees shaking so bad she collapsed instantly onto the ground. The scuff of feet alerted her to the presence of the Spaceman behind her. "No…" she croaked, her throat dry. "Please, no…"

Once again, she was engulfed. And the hazy memories began. Ever since Bad Wolf had bitten her, they'd been slightly clearer. Slightly easier to understand. But that made them all the more frightening. An impossible planet. A black hole. Monsters with tentacles on their face. A demon, immensely powerful, after their lives. And a man. One man there to save them all. A broken soul who saved everyone he could and grieved when it was never enough. She didn't know his name, that was hidden from her. But his face…she knew his face. She focused on his face as long as she could. He kept her fear at bay. But it morphed, as it always did, to another man. One with strange runes crawling over his skin. And the hysteria began to build.

"Somebody! Anybody! Save me from the Spaceman!"

The auditory interface on the inside of the helmet lit up in response to her voice.

She brought her hands up and slammed them against the front of the mask. This was new. There was something inside the suit with her!

The screen fuzzed momentarily from the force of her hands, and when it flicked back on, she was presented with a question.

Proceed: Y/N ?

"Yes!" She shrieked. Anything to get out out. _Outoutoutout…_

There was a faint buzzing in the headset and some long dormant part of herself stirred long enough to identify it as a ringing telephone. Then there was a click and an unfamiliar man was speaking to her.

"This is President Nixon."

There were people here. People who weren't Madam, or the shrinking man. They frightened her. With their urgent voices and quick feet, they dashed about, disturbing her quiet. Didn't they know that the louder they were, the faster the Spaceman showed up?

"I knew you'd be here."

She spun in place, terrified of being found. "No! Don't take me back. I don't want the fog. I want Bad Wolf." She crouched down and lifted her teeth in an almost snarl, trying to imitate her inner wolf.

The strange woman with curly hair raised her hands to show that they were empty. "It's okay! I'm not taking you anywhere. I'm not even going to touch you."

She relaxed marginally as the woman crouched down onto her heels several feet away. The more time she spent away from Madam, the less fog there was in her mind. She'd gone searching for Bad Wolf many times, but had never found it again. She had been hoping to hide from the Spaceman in this warehouse and look for Bad Wolf. But then this woman and her friends had appeared, and…

"I'm not going back." She warned the woman.

The woman smiled. "I don't want you to. Just wanted to see the beginning. You'll understand someday." The woman looked up, and a brilliant smile crossed her features. "He's here." She looked back at the girl. "He's worth it. He's worth all of it."

"Who?" The girl asked warily.

"The man from your nightmare." Then she stood and swept away.

The girl wanted to follow the woman. To find out how she knew about the man in her nightmare. But she rejoined the three men and the woman she'd come with, and the men made her nervous. Something about one of them just wasn't quite right. It was like he wasn't human somehow…

She hovered on the edges as the people tromped around her sanctuary. They found the spaceman and she watched as they poked and prodded at him. Last time he'd eaten her, she'd actually managed to escape. But even now, he was healing up. Just waiting until the moment when he could come back and eat her again. She almost hoped that he would eat the not-human man. A feeling she ascribed to Bad Wolf warned her away from him, and she trusted Bad Wolf. But the Spaceman lay dormant around them. _Maybe the Spaceman only eats little girls, _she thought.

They were beginning to look for her, but then something happened. Something that had happened to her a few times and frightened her deeply. She began to find herself in places without knowing how or why she'd gotten there. She would know she'd been running, but would be unable to say what from. And it was happening again. She appeared in different places, as if scooped up out of time, and it only frightened her further. But gradually the time jumps slowed, and there were whole minutes where she knew exactly where she was. Even so, she kept running, putting more and more distance between her and the people with the woman.

She moved out the back and through the part of the warehouse that looked like a machine shop. And that was where she saw it again. That was where the fog lifted entirely.

"TARDIS," she said in wonder, moving closer and placing her hands on the panels. There was the faintest of hums running through the wood, and she imagined a greeting in the sound. "TARDIS," she whispered again, and placing her cheek upon it, closed her eyes. Deep in the buried place of her mind, Bad Wolf threw back its head and _howled._


	14. Chapter 13

Author's Note: Going out of town for the weekend again. So you should be getting this tomorrow morning. But...meh. You can have it now.

ooOO00OOoo

She stumbled ever farther from the warehouse and its warring inhabitants. When she'd seen the TARDIS again after so many years, it had woken something in her that would not be silenced. Something other than Bad Wolf. Even now it was humming, singing, yelling, _roaring_ in her head. It fought together with the wolf against Madam's training, the two conflicting impulses making her head pound and driving her out into the snow. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering from forces outside and in.

_Go back._ Said Madam's training. _Get close to him and kill him._

_Run away!_ Said the music, backed by animalistic howls. _Keep him safe!_

She'd made it as far as the docks before exhaustion claimed her. She found an abandoned shipping crate and crawled inside of it, finding it packed with what must be raw cotton. The fibers were rough on her skin and full of seeds. But she didn't care. It was softer and warmer than the ground outside. And now that she was far enough away, the conditioning's voice had died out and the girl could listen to the music.

The music and the wolf twined together until they were one being in her mind. Then together they danced through her, breaking down the chains Madam had put there. When they were done, they broke apart into a golden cloud that poured down upon her being, soaking into the barren soil of her soul. When it was done she was a whole person once again.

"I am the Bad Wolf," she said, eyes drooping as the remnants of the music swirled a lullaby in her mind. "I create myself." She fell asleep to the sound of the universe.

ooOO00OOoo

When she awoke, she was clear-headed and condition-free for the first time in years. The impulse to kill the Doctor was still there. Years of training couldn't be broken in a few hours, but for the first time in six years, she knew who she was.

"Rose," she said, trying the sound of the name on her lips. "Rose Tyler." She shook her head sadly. It didn't fit. Rose Tyler was a shop girl from London who went on mad adventures with the Doctor. She fell in love with him, was lost to a parallel world and…she strained to remember. What happened then? She thought back, remembering the last time she had been Rose Tyler.

She was…twenty six, she'd just been promoted to head of her department…she was on her way home from work when there was a flash of _something_…then the tractor trailer behind her had exploded, and…

She shook her head again, it was no good. The memory just wasn't there. Either it was just so long ago that she couldn't remember, or those _things_ had been there, editing themselves, and the events of the crash, out of her memory. She'd figured out what they did early in her captivity. Before her mind had given over to Madam and her teachings.

She wished that she could be mad at Madam and her monsters, but…they'd brought her back to this world. To _his_ world. How they'd managed to do what he'd deemed impossible, she might never know. But it didn't matter. She was here _now_ and that was so much closer than she'd been before. Of course… she looked down at her eight year old body. This wasn't exactly what she'd been envisioning.

How had she regenerated, anyway? If that was even what had happened. Unless she had been compressed into the body of a child a la Cassandra, she couldn't think of whatever else could have happened. So if she _had _regenerated, how? Was it something that Madam had done to her? Or was it the Doctor?

A confusing mix of love, lust, and hate washed over her and she squirmed uncomfortably.

"I'm eight!" she wailed. "Why did I have to be eight?"

But there was no helping it. She would just have to grow up. _Again_.

ooOO00OOoo

Some time later, she emerged from the cotton with a plan. For all that he was in America looking for _her_ apparently (and did he know who she was? Oh god, what if he _did?_) she knew that he spent most of his time in England. And despite everything, the loss of her parents, her name, even her _body_, she still identified as English. So, she snuck aboard one of the tankers bound for the British Isles. What she'd do when she got there, she hadn't the faintest notion. But at least she'd be back in her home again. She hoped Queen Victoria wasn't amused.

ooOO00OOoo

The trip was long and boring. Her young body just couldn't handle the abuse she was putting it through. And, of course, she just _had_ to go and get herself locked _inside_ one of the containers with no food or water. If she didn't die of dehydration, starvation would claim her soon after. She'd tried banging on the container walls, to no effect. No one came down into the storage areas, there was no one to hear her scream. Without anything to do and her body weakening rapidly, she spent the rest of the trip sorting through the events of her life. Trying to put them into perspective. She raged against the loss of her Mum and Pete. And little Tony. How old must he be now? Would he even remember his lost sister? She railed against the conditioning she'd been put through. Conditioning that even now was calculating ways of finding him, then using her innocent features to get close to him. And finally, she wept for his death. For while she'd not gotten a good look at any of the three men in the warehouse that night, there was one thing of which she was certain: none of them was her pinstriped Doctor.

When the ship docked a month later, she was grimy, tired, and hungry...and in possession of a new body. She'd died, packed away within the shipping crate. And promptly begun starving again. They opened her container and she stumbled from her hiding place. The cry went up immediately.

"Oi now! Who're you?"

"Look at that! It's a child!"

"Was 'e onboard the whole time?"

The men guided her to a local café where they sat her down and fed her. She consumed her first hot meal in weeks without tasting any of it. Within short order, the authorities were called and they descended on the café with a flurry of clipboards and paper.

She told them she'd been kidnapped. Summoning her biggest, most pathetic eyes, she wove a tale of abuse and neglect. Sticking to her age-appropriate understanding, she repeated over and over that she was kidnapped, all the while leading them to believe that she'd really been sold by her family. When she pulled out her old estate accent, it was a done deal, and she found the whole thing rather easy. Maybe too easy.

But they believed her.

She was taken away and cleaned up, given new clothing and a pretty hat. Two weeks later, she was adopted by a nice woman named Mrs. Pond.

"What's your name?" Amelia asked her. Amelia was Mrs. Pond's niece.

"Don't have one. But everybody calls me Melody." Because, when she wasn't paying attention, she had a habit of humming the lullaby that had sent her off to sleep that first night in the cotton. The song of the TARDIS. The song of the universe.

"Are you my new sister, Melody?" Amelia asked.

Melody looked back and forth between her dark chocolate skin and Amelia's flame red hair and fair skin. Then she shrugged. She _had_ been adopted. "I guess so."

"Great! Wanna play Doctor and aliens?"

ooOO00OOoo

That night, Melody laughed until she cried. Of course it had to be the Doctor.

There had been a crack in her wall, Amelia had told her. And on the other side had been a huge eyeball. But the Doctor had come in his blue box and fixed it. The adults all thought that Amelia was making him up. But Melody knew better. He'd been here. And immediately after his regeneration, it sounded like.

Mrs. Pond wanted her to provide a stabilizing influence for Amelia; distract her from her obsession with the Doctor. But Melody would do no such thing.

She would stay right here with Amelia, and wait for the Doctor to return.


	15. Chapter 14

She missed it! He came back, and she missed it! Twelve years she'd waited in Leadworth for him to return for Amy like he promised he would. (He always kept his promises.) Then, six months after she gave up and went to the city to try and track him down, he arrived at Leadworth again just in time to stop the destruction of Earth. Again.

It was maddening.

She'd been in London when all the radios and televisions had been taken over by a giant talking eyeball blaring out the same boring message over and over. She'd know what it was instantly, of course. Memories from the Before Time told her that it was omm-comm technology. Same as what had been on Jack's warship and what the gas mask child had done. She got flashes of those times, occasionally. Usually only when something around her was similar to the memory. Drawing it out. After that, she would be able to access it on her own. She had a wealth of memories to pull from now. Knowledge of things she'd done with the Doctor adding weight to her knowledge that she had been Rose Tyler. Even if she wasn't now.

The strange symbols in her statistics class reminded her of the Krillitanes. An ice sculpture reminded her of the flash-frozen planet of Woman Wept with tsunamis of ice. Biochemistry was an endless reminder of that planet of giant mushrooms. And of course, the spacesuit had reminded her of the black hole with the impossible planet. There were a few other things she remembered. Everyday, she tried hard to get more memories back. But they had been sealed off when she abandoned the name of Rose Tyler in her heart. And she just couldn't get them, or her name, back.

She was majoring in psychology (after giving up on the disastrous run at biology) and was using the things she was learning to clear her mind of the training Madam had put in place. But she'd done that. She was clean.

Now if only she could _find_ him!

ooOO00OOoo

Melody banged into her apartment and threw her bag onto the floor, slamming the door shut behind her. "That tramp!" she screamed, throwing her mobile phone across the room to hit the wall with a thunk. "She left without me! Twice!"

She had just come back from a visit with her sister, and it took everything in Melody not to call Amy up and give her a piece of her mind. But, as that would have ruined the week of tongue biting she had just completed, she refrained.

The Doctor had _finally_ come back for Amy the night before her wedding, and Amy had swanned off without a thought to her sister, who was just dying to see the Doctor. And she knew it! Knew it and left without Melody. Not even a word. Come to think of it, she'd abandoned Rory as well. But they'd gone back for him! Leaving Melody behind without a clue.

She knew she couldn't really blame Amy. If the Doctor showed up right now, she'd probably hurl herself at him and just start babbling. Never mind that he wouldn't have any idea who she was. Who'd think of their sister when they were traveling with Him on the TARDIS? Mels knew she wouldn't.

"Oh, Doctor. Where are you?" Mels said mournfully. "Is this the way it's always going to be? Just missing each other?"

She sat down on the couch and began to think. Amy and Rory were married now. Of course, _he'd_ been at the wedding, too. Wasn't it just the luck that he'd arrived _after_ she'd left to come back to London? Amy had sworn up and down that it was fine if she left an hour or so early from the wedding to begin the drive. There it was just the last little bit of the reception - and did Mels really want to stick around for the clean up when she didn't have to? And oh, she had that final the next day. No, really! You were here for everything else, and you were so great. Go, go! You won't miss anything.

Mels scowled ferociously at the wall. Nothing but the Doctor. But...Mels' head came up and a wicked smile bloomed across her face. After a whirlwind honeymoon with the Doctor (and didn't _that_ bring up all sorts of naughty thoughts?) they were back in Leadworth to settle down and try for a family. They _knew_ him now. They had his TARDIS number. There had to be a way to get him to come to _her_. But he wouldn't come just for a social call. This required a catastrophe.

ooOO00OOoo

Amy hung up the phone, then immediately picked it back up again.

"Problem with Mels?" Rory asked from the couch.

"Maybe. She said some odd things about the university." Amy said, punching in a series of numbers from memory.

Rory turned to peer over the back of the couch at her. "So you're calling the Doctor?"

"Hmm?" She put the phone to her ear then focused on her husband. "Oh, yeah. Seems like his sort of problem."

It rang a few times then went to voicemail.

"You've reached the Doctor! I'm probably out – hey, no. River, stop that! It's not a toy! Look, I'll call you back, okay? River-"

The line went dead, then there was a beep.

" 'Lo, Doctor. It's me." She paused. "Just spoke to Mels. You remember me telling you about my sister Mels, right?" She glanced at Rory, who shook his head. "Yeah, course you do. Well, she just told me some interesting things about uni. You might want to come look. September 20, 2010. 2 pm."

No sooner had she hung up than there was that familiar grinding sound reverberating from their backyard.

"Of course, he always comes when you call." Rory grumped.

The backdoor was flung open and the Doctor came in like a gust of wild wind. "Hello, Ponds!" He fluttered in, allowing the door to bang closed behind him. "Amelia Pond!" he cried, enveloping her in an exuberant hug. "And Rory the Roman!" he bounced over to Rory, who received the same treatment. "How are my two favorite people?"

"Fine, fine." Rory said, once he'd been released.

"So!" the Doctor said, clapping his hands together. "What's this about your friend-"

"Sister!"

"Right, right. Sister. Sorry."

Amy huffed and crossed her arms. "She was acting really odd. Talking about vacuum packed rats and flying gargoyles. And she wouldn't shut up about her statistics teacher. Something about this new ultra-difficult problem he had them working on. Skasis something."

"Skasis Paradigm?"

"Yeah, that's the one," Amy confirmed.

"Hmm. That sounds suspiciously like the Krillitanes."

"You know what she's talking about? Already? That's a record, even for you." Rory commented.

"Yes, well. I've met them before." He gestured to the back door. "Shall we?"

ooOO00OOoo

Mels hung up the phone and sat on her couch, her heart in her throat. She'd looked, but been unable to find anything strange about her school or the surrounding area. In the end, she'd settled on telling her sister the broad strokes of what the Krillitanes had been doing. The Doctor probably wouldn't believe that it was really the Krillitanes, but that didn't matter. He'd come out of curiosity. To find out who or what was trying to get his attention with information from his past. Then, once he was here…

The wind picked up, scattering the papers on her coffee table. The most beautiful sound in the universe echoed through the room, and a blue police public call box slowly materialized in her kitchen.

"Oh, god." She whispered, eyes glued to the door. "He's here."

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: Next one's gonna be FUN!


	16. Chapter 15

Amy was the first out the door, and she turned the corner into the bedroom. "Mels? You home?"

"Living room!" Mels called back.

"There you are!" Amy came in the room. "Look, I thought about what you said, and it sounded like something the Doctor would be interested in, so I gave him a call. Didn't expect him to land _in_ your apartment, though. Sorry about that."

Mels, lounging indolently on the couch, gave a one-shoulder shrug. "S'cool. I didn't like the linoleum anyway."

"Oh, it'll be fine when we leave." The Doctor emerged from the TARDIS, followed closely by Rory, a cheerful smile on his face.

Melody Pond smiled. "You said he was funny. You never said he was hot." She stood and walked up to him, adjusted his bowtie. "Love the bowtie."

His eyes widened and his eyes flicked over to Amy. "See?" he crowed. "Bowties are cool!" Amy shook her head, and he returned his attention to Mels. "Now," he said, abruptly serious. "Who are you?"

"Doctor!" Amy objected. "This is my sister, Mels. I _told_ you about her. Did you forget again?"

"I remember, Amelia," he responded, searching Mel's gaze. "But she knows things she couldn't. Referencing things four hundred years in my past. She told you, specifically to get me to come. Now that's interesting. That's very interesting, because I've never seen her before. So. Who are you?"

Mels smiled and wandered away. "I was hoping you'd recognize me. But I suppose it's to be expected. I was a few shades lighter and considerably more blond the last time we met."

"Mels-" Amy began.

"Not now, Amy," Melody said dreamily as she pulled down a particularly thick book from the bookshelf. "I have to kill the Doctor."

"What?"

"What?"

"_What?"_

The incredulous phrase was mimicked by three voices at once. Melody ignored them all and opened the book to reveal an old revolver. She pulled it out and pointed it at the Doctor, dropping the book and kicking it away.

"Mels!" Rory cried.

"Mels, stop!" Amy begged.

The Doctor stood there calmly and stared down the barrel of the gun. "Who are you?" he asked quietly.

"Well, that's the question, isn't it? I'm the lover you never had."

"Mels-" Amy began, but the Doctor cut her off with a hand gesture.

"Who are you, Melody Pond?" the Doctor asked with a piercing gaze. "I've never met you before."

"Oh," Mels said, pacing a step closer. "That's where you're wrong. You've danced with me, and laughed with me, and run with me. We hung together on an impossible planet over a black hole and faced down the devil. We wandered a planet of mushrooms, poking at enormous spores."

"No…" the Doctor murmured, his eyes huge.

"Yes!" Melody's eyes were burning pits. "We fired a rocket at ten downing street, and turned Margaret Slitheen into an egg."

"It's impossible!"

"I don't think you know what that word means, _Doctor_." She spat his name as if it were an insult.

"You can't be…."

She paced a step closer. "Who am I, Doctor?"

"No!" the Doctor cried, taking a half-step backwards, and Melody flowed forward to match him. "No, that wasn't you! You weren't there!"

"But I was." Her gun still trained between his hearts. "Time changes everyone."

"Not like this." His eyes raked up and down her form. She was, once again, twenty six. She wondered if he saw the irony.

"_You_ do," she reminded him. "Who am I, Doctor?"

"You're not," he said stubbornly.

"I am," she countered.

He stared at her, hopelessly lost. Fear and longing swirled in his eyes as he tried to accept the truth she was presenting him with. Rose Tyler was dead. Lost in the explosion in Pete's World.

Her gaze softened, filled with love. But the gun. It was aimed straight at his chest, and it didn't waver.

"What's the first word you ever said to me, Doctor? The first word. Down in that basement of Hendricks. Surrounded by shopkeep dummies. One word. Just one. What was it?" she spoke softly. Sweetly. As if to a lover, reminiscing fond memories.

His jaw worked; he swallowed convulsively. He looked away from her, looked back. Finally, he spoke. "Run."

"Yes." She smiled, and it was like the sun coming up after a long night. "Run."

"How is it-" he began to ask, but she cut him off.

"What is my name, Doctor?" her tone was harsh again, unyielding. And her finger began to tighten on the trigger.

"What?" he asked dumbly.

"My _name_."

"…Rose Tyler."

And like that, the spell was broken.

"Oh, god!" Mels choked, lowering the gun with an effort of will and stumbling backwards. "Oh my god!"

"Rose-" The Doctor said, moving towards her.

"No!" The gun came up, stopping him in his tracks.

The Doctor raised his hands and slowly backed off. The gun was shaking, as she fought to point it elsewhere, but her finger was tightening inexorably on the trigger.

"Please," the Doctor begged, his whole body tilted towards her, even as his feet remained planted. "Please...don't do this."

"I don't want to!" she cried, but the gun steadied in her hand, still aimed right at his hearts.

"Please! Please, Rose, Mels, whoever. Please...come back to me." he begged her, stopping just short of dropping to his knees.

The tableau froze as Melody held the Doctor at bay with a gun. Amy and Rory watched helplessly as the Doctor begged. The gun dropped, and Mels stared at the Doctor with a look of such complete longing that it hurt to watch.

The Doctor slid one foot forward the tiniest amount. "Rose-"

"I love you," she said. Then she put the gun under her chin and pulled the trigger.

"No!" The Doctor dashed forward, somehow managing to catch her before she hit the ground.

"Mels!" Amy cried, rushing to her sister's side.

"No, no..." Rory mumbled, collapsing next to his wife.

"Oh, my Rose..." The Doctor whimpered brokenly, hovering a hand over her face as if he wanted to touch her, but dare not. He settled on wrapping both arms around her back and curling over her.

"Oh my god, look!" Rory cried, pointing at the ruined mess at the top of Mels' head.

When Amy and the Doctor looked, there was just a small cut, which healed rapidly and vanished.

"What?" Amy asked, as a soft golden glow began to seep from Melody's pores.

The Doctor put Melody down and grabbed each of them by their arms. "Over here," he urged.

"But, Doctor-" Rory protested, pointing to Melody who was almost obscured by the strange light.

"I know what's happening, and she'll be fine. Trust me."

"What _is_ happening?" Amy asked.

"Regeneration."

The golden light suddenly increased in intensity until it peaked, rushing out in a blinding wave of power that the three observers were forced to turn their gazes away from. When they looked back, the woman they knew as River Song had taken the place of Melody Pond.

"That's...regeneration?" Rory asked. "Has she always been able to do that?"

"No." The Doctor moved quickly to Melody's side and placed both hands at her temples. He stared blankly down at her face while he delicately probed her mind. "Rose...River. Why did you have to do that?" he whispered, dropping his hands. "The conditioning is set now. If you'd let me in before you regenerated..." he bowed his head momentarily. Then he shifted and slid his arms under her, hefting her into his arms. "Rory, open the door," he said as he stood, gesturing with his head at the TARDIS.

"But, Doctor...she's River," Rory objected, staring open mouthed.

"Yes, Rory," The Doctor said with exaggerated patience, standing outside the TARDIS. "Now. Open the doors."

"...right."

Rory opened the doors, and the Doctor swept inside, his companions immediately dropping off his radar.

"Oh, no you don't!" Amy said, storming after him.

The Doctor led them deep into the bowels of the ship, down stairs and through corridors. He stopped before an unmarked door, which slid open. Amy and Rory hovered at the door uncertainly while the Doctor laid Melody in the exact center of the completely white room. Then he joined his companions and the door slid shut, instantly becoming transparent. The Doctor stared in at the motionless form for a long moment. Then he turned and went back to the console.


	17. Chapter 16

"Hey, wait a minute – Doctor!" Amy scrambled after him with Rory bringing up the rear. "Just what was all that?" she demanded when they all reached the control room.

The Doctor ignored them in favor of taking them back into the Vortex. Once they were stable, he turned to them, observing their frightened faces. "Right, then," he said, "questions?"

"Yeah, I've got questions." Amy growled. "What happened?"

"Melody regenerated into River Song."

Amy almost snarled, and Rory put a restraining hand on her arm.

"Yes, Doctor. We saw that. But how? Why? She obviously knew you. Just as you obviously knew her. Despite the fact that you didn't recognize her. Sounds like she traveled with you. How is that?"

The Doctor slumped, rubbing the pads of his fingers over his forehead. "She's Rose Tyler. Or she was. She traveled with me for about four years. She was lost to an alternate reality."

"If she's lost, how is she here? And my _sister_." Amy asked.

"I did something monumentally stupid. I went back in time to the point where that world diverged from this one and built a bridge."

"You can do that?" Rory asked, eyes wide.

"With a lot of time and luck, yes."

"But-"

The Doctor held up a hand to forestall any questions. "I don't have all the answers. But I can guess at most of them." He folded his arms and leaned against the console, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment. "When I first built the bridge, I was too excited to think it all the way through to its most obvious conclusion. I built it, and crossed over. I never considered that once I opened the door, anyone would be able to step through."

"When I arrived, it was just in time to discover that she'd died. If only…" he shook his head, a mix of anger, frustration, and resignation sweeping his features. "When I came back, I went and sealed it through all of time. Only I can pass back and forth now. And only with the TARDIS." He put a hand fondly on the console. "But, in my personal timeline, there is about four weeks in which the bridge is still open. If someone knew me well, or was watching my movements…well. Four weeks is more than enough time to cross over, fake her death, and come back."

"And then…what?" Rory asked. "Brainwash her to kill you?"

The Doctor shrugged half heartedly. "Who better than a companion? I would never hurt any of you."

A pained groan filled the room, obviously piped in from elsewhere.

The Doctor looked up. "Ah, she's awake. Shall we?"

ooOO00OOoo

They watched from the other side of the one-way mirror, as Melody sat up, rubbing the top of her head. "That didn't go as planned." She mumbled, standing gingerly. She wandered around the room, casually poking the walls at random intervals. Not really looking to escape so much as discovering her limits. She completed the circuit, and only then did she settle down to inspect her new body. "Finally! I'm an adult again." She clacked her teeth together a few times. "New teeth!" She ran her tongue along them, testing their edges. "I'd kill for a mirror." Then she looked right at the hidden door from beyond which the Doctor was studying her. "That was a joke, Sweetie."

The Doctor grimaced and reached out, touching an unremarkable bit of wall next to the door. The door flared momentarily, then cleared, allowing Melody an unobstructed view of the Doctor, with Amy and Rory beside him.

Rory looked between Mels and the Doctor, at the electric eye contact that had been established. Then he turned to his wife and began to tug her away. "C'mon."

"But-"

Rory just turned and pointed at the Doctor, who had reached out and put one hand on the door, a look of heartbreak on his face.

"Right." Amy grabbed Rory's hand and the two of them left the Doctor and Mels to their reunion. They didn't go far, just around the corner. No way Amy was giving up this opportunity. But it was enough to give them the illusion of privacy.

"…Rose," the Doctor whispered, his voice a mix of wonder and pain.

She grimaced. "Don't call me that, please. I haven't been Rose Tyler for almost twenty five years. Call me Mels."

He just stared at her, eyes filled with a fierce sort of longing. "I'm sorry. This is my fault."

She raised a single eyebrow, tossing her unruly mane of hair over her shoulder. "In what way are you responsible for me trying to kill you?"

"I went back for you. I know I said impossible, but…I found a way and went back. But," he looked away, "when I got there…"

"They had beat you to it." She supplied in a soft voice.

He swallowed and nodded. "I spoke at your funeral."

"Oh?"

"Poetry."

She gave a wicked grin. "Shame I missed it." Then she tilted her head saucily to the side. "But I'm here, now."

He stared at her, jaw working. "Uhh…One fish, Two Fish. Red Fish-"

The sound of her body impacting the door reverberated down the hallway. She pressed a delicate kiss to the door over his hand. "Blue fish?" She smiled, "how romantic."

He gulped and moved his hand away.

Her smile turned wistful, and she settled down on the floor. He did the same. "All right, Doctor. Now what?"

"We wait and see if the Zero Room works to remove your conditioning."

She frowned. "Zero Room?"

"For Time Lords. Designed to enhance our telepathy and assist in healing damaged neuropaths. It _might_ be able to set your brain into healthier patterns that free your mind from the conditioning."

"That's just the thing," she said, leaning forward, "I thought I _had_ managed to free myself from it. Or I never would have contacted you." She paused, giving him a piercing look. "What happens if the Zero Room doesn't work?"

"The Zero Room was created by some of the finest-"

"Don't even try, Sweetie. I know you too well." She eyed him up and down, obviously liking what she saw, and he couldn't help but preen a little. But her gaze was calculating when she said, "let me rephrase. What happens _when_ the Zero Room fails?" At his silence, she put her hand on the door by his face. "It will. You know it. Even now, part of me is trying to work out a way to get you to open this door so I can break your neck."

"No. The Zero Room will work." He insisted. "It will. It takes a mirror imprint of the latent bio-patterns left over from the previous regeneration. Then, in the event of a head-trauma induced regeneration, it pulls those patterns back up and assists in laying those old patterns over the new ones, allowing for some areas of growth and alteration due to regenerative dissociative cognitive divergence resulting from the new physical manifestation of the specific Time Lords genetic makeup, derived from the base biological Trioxyribonucleic acid, and then-"

"Stop with the techno-babble, Sweetie." She smiled impishly. "Your ten is showing."

He stared at her, at a loss for words. _My ten is showing? _He didn't want to be holding this conversation from the other side of a sealed door. He wanted to hold her. Wrap his arms around her and never let go. Kiss her breathless and tell her how much she meant to him. He thought he'd loved River Song. But knowing where she came from…well, he'd never stood a chance, did he?

They basked in the joy of being together; each unwilling to say what needed to be said.

She was the one who took the plunge. "You have to leave me."

"NO!" His response was instinctual. From the gut. His hearts teamed up to hijack his mouth, totally removing his brain from the equation. For even as he denied it, he knew she was right. He hung his head while she stared at him sadly.

"Oh, Doctor." Once again, she reached out, stroking her hand over the door by his face as if she could somehow touch him. Hold him. Kiss him as she'd dreamed of doing for two lifetimes now. "You know I'm right, Sweetie. We stay together and I'll just keep trying to kill you whether I want to or not. Madam was very thorough." She choked. "And I won't let that happen. I'll burn through all of my regenerations first."

"You can't!" he cried. Placing both hands against the door, he leaned forward until he was almost plastered to its surface. "You can't. You've got so much life to live ahead of you now. So many wonderful things to see! And I won't…be around…forever…" he trailed off as a thought occurred to him.

She laughed bitterly. "What makes you think I want to live in a universe in which you don't exist? Again?"

He stared at her for a while longer, then nodded as if coming to a decision. He stood, and she joined him, a look of confusion on her face. "Doctor, what is it?"

"I know what to do."

"Yeah?" and there went her wicked smile again. "Me?"

He stared at her, gobsmacked. He was used to River Song being incredibly flirtatious, but he'd always thought that it was something she'd grown into. But here she was, newly regenerated, and already making sexual jokes. It made him uncomfortable….and just a little bit hot under the collar. His eyes did a quick down-up along the length of her body, drinking her in.

_The Doctor just checked me out!_ She thought incredulously. Never before had he responded to any of her flirts, and she had long since come to the conclusion that she was throwing herself at a wall. But it was a very nice wall and her flirting had never seemed to bother him, so she'd decided that if they couldn't be together, well, she'd get her jollies by flirting. But if he was going to respond….that just opened up all new avenues to her.

"I must admit, I like the new body. It's strange to have such light skin again. And I have no idea what I'm going to do about this hair. But…" she cut him a glance. "I think you like it, too."

He gulped and looked away, ruffling the hair at the back of his head nervously.

She laughed and took pity on him. "You never did say how it happened."

"Huh?" he said, his mind clearly elsewhere, and she smirked.

"I'm _human, _Doctor. Or I was. Humans don't regenerate. So how is it that I do? And do the same rules apply to me as they do you? Thirteen regenerations, right?"

"Thirteen, yes. And…I think it was Bad Wolf."

"Bad…really? _I_ did this?"

"No. Not so much _you_ as the Vortex. The Untempered Schism on my homeworld is the source of most of what made my people different from the rest of the universe. We have contact with the raw energies of the Time Vortex early and often. It shapes us. Gives us time sense, enables us to regenerate."

"And your massive Time Lord head? That from the Vortex, too?" she said impishly.

He shot her a glance, trying to tell if she was implying what he thought she was implying. But it was no good. Even this early in her regeneration, he simply couldn't read that smile. She might have been flirting again….or she might not.

She laughed and waved him off. "You're thinking again, I can tell. I'd ask what you have in mind, but…" she gave him a piercing glance and he looked away again guiltily. "You wouldn't tell me the truth anyway."

He huffed.

When he failed to say anything, she gave him a heartbreaking smile. "Your mad idea better work. I've already proven that I'd rather kill myself than hurt you."

He nodded. Touching the door once more in a gesture of good bye, he turned and disappeared down the hallway. But before she could even begin to wallow in the sadness of being separated from him, he was back, a comical frown on his face. "What do you mean, 'mad idea'?"

Her laughter echoed down the hallway. "Aren't they all?"

He raised his hand and opened his mouth to object. When she just smirked at him, he closed it with a click. "Right." Then he hurried away.

Once she was sure he was gone, Melody slumped to the floor with her head bowed, her back against the door. "Dammit!" she screamed into her hands.

"Mels?"

She twisted to see her sister and brother-in-law staring down at her worriedly.

"Amy, Rory, hey," she said, quickly wiping away her tears and plastering on a bright smile. "Sorry for lying to you-"

"It's okay Mels, I get it. Better than you think." Amy plopped down on the floor where the Doctor had been. "We're not linear, you 'n me."

Melody blinked. "What?"

"You know I've been traveling with the Doctor for about two years?"

"Yeah," Mels said warily.

"We've known you the whole time." Rory put in, settling beside his wife. "This you."

"What? How?"

Amy shrugged. "You've got your own time travel thing. Looks like a huge wristwatch."

"A Vortex manipulator?"

"You know what it is? I've never heard of it before."

Mels' face turned sour. "Once upon a time, I knew a guy." She shook herself. "So if we aren't linear, where are you?"

Rory stepped in. "We just finished the trees of Pern."

Melody gave him a blank look. "I don't know what you mean."

Amy laughed. "Oh, this is _fun!_ No wonder. We can't tell you. Spoilers. Our past is your future."

"So I'll see you again? And I won't try to kill the Doctor?" Mels asked excitedly.

Amy and Rory shared an amused glance, then answered in chorus.

"Spoilers!"


	18. Chapter 17

The Doctor spent the rest of the trip playing least in sight, claiming that he had preparations to make for his 'mad plan' as he'd taken to calling it.

Amy kept visiting Mels, who spent the whole time locked up in the Zero Room. She never complained about her incarceration, or the lack of attention from the Doctor. When Amy had asked her cautiously about it, Mels had responded with high spirits.

"You've traveled with him, you know what he's like. If he's 'ignoring' me, it's because he's working on a way for us to be together. And how can I complain about that? Besides, you as good as told me that he succeeds. We have adventures together, and I'm not trying to kill him in those. I've waited two lifetimes to be with him. I can wait a little longer if it means we get our Forever." She said the word as if it held deep importance. "I could go for a cuppa, though," she added cheekily.

Amy laughed and went to get the tea.

ooOO00OOoo

They landed on New Earth in the fifty-first century. Mels was relaxed and smiling in a pair of handcuffs. When the Doctor had approached her with them, the smile she'd given him had contained enough heat to power a small town.

"Ohh, Doctor! Where'd you get those? Handcuffs? Kinky."

His face had flushed a delightful shade of red, but he'd snapped them securely on her wrists when she offered them to him, her laughter ringing out like a bell.

Now, they sauntered to the hospital, the crushed grass under their feet releasing the scent of apples.

Rory sniffed. "What's that smell?"

"Apple grass," the Doctor and Mels answered together. Then they looked at each other and laughed.

"Look at them," Rory grumbled to Amy. "She just met him and she still has more of a connection to him than we ever could."

"I think it's sweet," Amy said with an indulgent smile. "You heard their story. I'm glad they're finally reunited after all this time."

"Not for long, though," Rory replied darkly, and Amy was reminded of the events at Lake Silencio.

"Well, he won't go now, surely? Now that he's got her again?" Amy fretted.

"I don't know, Amy," Rory replied, moving to catch up to the Doctor and Mels. "I just don't know."

ooOO00OOoo

"Aww," Mels said when they were checked into the hospital by an octopus. "I was hoping for cat nuns."

"What?" Rory asked.

Mels simply winked.

The Doctor said, "Never trust a cat in a nun's wimple," and hurried them to the elevator. He and Mels got in one, and as the doors closed, he said "floor eleven, and watch out for the disinfectant."

"What?" Amy called.

"If they get possessed by a flap of skin, I am never going to let you live it down," Mels teased and lunged, fingers curled into claws aimed at his eyes.

The Doctor snapped one hand up and snagged the chain linking her wrists together, jerking her hands up and then down behind her neck. He stepped out of the way as her forward momentum carried her to the wall of the elevator. He pinned her there by the simple expedience of forcing one leg between hers and leaning against her. With one hand still grasping the chain between her wrists and the other bracing himself against the wall by the head, he had her very efficiently trapped.

She groaned and thumped her forehead against the wall. "Dammit. I am so sorry!"

"It's fine," he told her, not loosening his grip. "I knew it would happen."

She craned her head back and to the side, trying to see him, but it was about that time that the disinfectant started, and she promptly ducked her head with a muffled shriek to avoid getting a face full of liquid. He chuckled and leaned in, brushing his lips over the skin of her arm in the lightest of kisses. So light she wasn't even sure she felt it.

It took the whole disinfectant cycle for her muscles to relax into his grip. And only then did he release her, confident that she was no longer actively trying to kill him. She turned to face him as the cycle ended, her face a brilliant red. He laughed again and leaned in, brushing his lips over hers in an all-too-brief kiss. When he pulled back, she was only just starting to close her eyes.

And she snapped them back open with a look of pure indignation. "Doctor-!"

The doors slid open and he laughed, grasping the chain between her wrists between two fingers, playfully tugging her out of the elevator.

"Ohh…I hate you!" she snarled in frustration.

"No you don't," he sang with the air of someone who was completing the end of a horrible pun.

The other elevator dinged, and Amy and Rory emerged, Rory with a grin and Amy with a rather fierce scowl. "'Watch out for the disinfectant'?" she growled.

The Doctor was saved from answering by a hanar floating up. "Miss. Pond?"

Amy and Mels both looked. "Yes?" they said.

Rory grabbed Amy's hand and pulled her to his side. "No, no. You're Mrs. Williams now."

Mels stepped forward. "That's me."

"This one offers to humbly lead you to your room." The hanar was a species that was undeniably alien. Six slender legs extended six feet up in the air to terminate in a brilliant pink creature without any sort of visible orifice. It had no mouth, no eyes, no ears, just smooth skin that sort of reminded Amy of a speed boat. The mechanical voice it used to speak with was obviously a translator for the brilliant flashes of light that rippled up and down its flanks in complicated swirls and patterns of color. It was rather mesmerizing.

"All right." Mels made to follow, then stopped when she realized no one else had moved. "Doctor?"

He slid closer, bracketing her face in his hands. Hers came up to wrap around his wrists.

"This isn't goodbye," he told her. "You'll see me again. I promise." He leaned forward and laid a tender kiss on her forehead, then another on her lips.

She squeezed his wrists in her strong grip. Then she let him go. Her eyes were suspiciously bright, but her voice was strong. "Until next time."

The Doctor moved back and Amy and Rory came forward to say goodbye.

ooOO00OOoo

She was in the hospital for a week as they ran endless tests on her. She'd been admitted with psychological problems, but they had a hell of a time finding them. For all that she'd just tried to kill the man she loved, they could find no evidence of mental tampering on her. Far as the hospital staff was concerned, she had no conditioning to get rid of. So long as the Doctor wasn't around, she wished him no ill will. It was apparently only in his presence that she turned violent. And since he wasn't around, there wasn't much they could do. The news was more than a little depressing. She trusted the Doctor, she did. But she would never be sure that the conditioning was gone; that she wouldn't turn murderous the moment she saw him again. It would probably be best if she never saw him again. It was all very heartbreaking. How young and foolish she'd been when she'd said that she would give him her forever. She had so much more time to offer him than she'd ever thought she would, but now she dared not do so.

She escaped from the hospital as soon as she was able, and it was with a sense of profound relief that she put proper clothes on again. Inside her bundle of clothing was a TARDIS blue envelope. She opened it to find a key and a folded piece of paper. In Amy's shaky hand was a map leading someplace that looked residential. She studied the key, noting instantly that it wasn't a TARDIS key. As much as it hurt, she understood. She couldn't be trusted.

She stepped out of the hospital and into the sunlight, tipping her head back to bask in the rays. It didn't matter. They may not be _together, _but they were no longer apart.

The key opened an apartment, as she thought it would. It was sparsely furnished, leaving her plenty of room to put her own personal touch on it, which she appreciated. She'd just have to figure out what her touch _was._ She wandered the rooms, casually touching a table here, a bookshelf there, until she came to the bedroom, where there was a small blue notebook with TARDIS panels on the front. She flipped it open to see the Doctor's beautiful circular writing inscribed on the inside cover. The inside was completely blank. A journal, hmm.

Underneath, she found a slim tablet, with another folded note on top, this one in Rory's handwriting. "Runs on solar power," it said. She turned on the tablet and was absolutely delighted to find out that it was unequivocally a primer on the Gallifreyan language.

She hugged the note, tablet, and journal to her chest. "Thank you," she whispered.

ooOO00OOoo

She went to university. She needed something to do, her previous attempt at getting a degree had been derailed by the Doctor's arrival in her life, and she had no information about the time period. She started as a general studies major, but that rapidly changed to history and then to archeology as she realized that all she really wanted to do was track what the Doctor was doing, if only from afar.


	19. Chapter 18

It happened on a boring Saturday. She was just wandering around the city, trying to learn the streets when she felt it: a ping against the edge of her mind. She'd been feeling that sort of thing ever since she'd regenerated. After the Doctor regenerated, back when she was still Rose Tyler, they'd had a discussion once about the differences between his different bodies. It was more than just physical changes, he'd told her. Mental abilities, physical strength and senses...these things altered as well. In his new form, he'd had an enhanced sense of taste, which was why he was always licking things, he'd told her.

It seemed the same sort of thing was happening with her in this body. Her last body had an extremely good sense of smell, but this one...she could feel things with her mind. Sense things she'd never experienced before. She could almost tell, sometimes, what was going to happen to someone in the future. It was like there were...threads of time around them. And she could trace them forward, see where they were going, what they were going to do.

Now, she felt a...bump. A ripple in the timeline. A...she smirked. A disturbance in the force. She laughed to herself even as she followed it, weaving in and out of the foot traffic as she sought the source.

She stopped in front of a large house. Mansion was a more accurate description. And one that looked disturbingly familiar. She wracked her mind, trying to place it. But whatever it was, it was hidden in memories of the Before Time. Even now, she still had blank places, portions of her mind covered in fog. She shook her head, frustrated with her inability to pin down what was so familiar about the house. It didn't really matter. What was important was the disturbance in the timestream she felt emanating from the house. She squared her shoulders and approached the gate with determination. She may not be the Doctor, but she still had a responsibility to right wrongs when she found them. And whatever was in this house was fundamentally _wrong_ in a way that made her almost sick to her stomach.

She rang the doorbell and waited.

A beautiful young woman opened the door and nodded at her before stepping back. "Come in."

"Really? You're just going to let me in? I haven't even introduced myself."

The woman smiled. "The Face of Boe has been expecting you."

"The face of...oh, you've got to be joking." Mels shook her head. "The big floating head? The one who's been alive for millenia and supposedly knows all the secrets of the universe? _That_ face of Boe?"

The woman laughed gently and opened the door wider. "Why don't you come in and find out for yourself?"

Mels stepped in, noting the understated elegance of the house as the woman led her down halls and through doorways. The woman talked about various items they passed, giving an impromptu tour as they wound their way deeper into the house. Finally, she stopped before a closed set of doors and gestured. "The Face of Boe awaits you inside," then she turned and walked away.

Mels watched the woman leave, a bemused expression on her face. "Feeling a bit like Alice," she mumbled before turning back to the door and knocking.

::Enter, my old friend.::

The voice spoke, not from beyond the door, but inside her own mind.

Mel just laughed, and opened the door. At least that part was familiar. The Face of Boe sat inside his glass cage, faint smoke swirling around him. "Hello," she said, coming to stand before him. "Nice place you've got here." The bump in the timestream was coming from him. It was subtle, but consistent. Like an uncomfortable knot in a muscle.

::It suits my needs adequately.:: he turned to look at one of the chairs. ::Would you care to sit? We have much to discuss.::

"Yes, thank you," Mels pulled a chair closer and sat down, staring at the large head for a moment. She'd met him twice, back when she was Rose Tyler. But never with this face. She wondered how he knew her. Why he called her old friend. Was this more of the backwards timeline this body seemed to enjoy with all her friends?

::It is so good to see you again, old friend.:: Boe said, ::I have missed you greatly over the centuries. But, I can see that you do not know who I am.::

"No, sorry. Well, I mean, I know that you are the Face of Boe, but.."

::I understand.:: He paused. ::I was not always known as the Face of Boe. And I did not always look as I do now. The millennia have aged me beyond anything I ever imagined. You knew me when I had a younger face. We danced, upon an invisible warship, in the middle of a German air raid. I miss the days when I could hold a beautiful woman in my arms.::

She sat there, stunned at what he'd said. Dancing on a warship? German air raid? That...she had only once been in a situation like that. And the person she'd danced with had most certainly _not_ been the Face of Boe. It had been... "Jack Harkness?"

Boe laughed, ::The very same.::

"But, but..."

The laugh that rolled off him then was deep, and full of both amusement and love. ::Oh, to see that look on your face. You are so rarely surprised by anything anymore.::

"Jack? Jack...how? That's not...how I remember you. The Doctor said you were back on Earth, helping to rebuild it. That was, after the Daleks..." She trailed off, reliving memories from when the Doctor had regenerated the first time. "What happened? Tell me everything."

::Bad Wolf.:: he answered simply, and she groaned.

"It's always Bad Wolf, isn't it? What, did I turn you into this? I'm so sorry. I never imagined - he said you were fine!"

::I am fine. I was fine. I will always be fine, though I am starting to have doubts as to that, now.:: He paused, and when his voice went on it was filled with such infinite sadness, ::The Daleks killed me, back on Satelite Five. I held them off, the last man standing.::

She stared at him, waiting for him to go on.

::The Doctor sent you away, and when you came back, you were a goddess of time. At that moment, you had the power of the universe at your command. And what did you do? You brought me back to life. You loved me enough to do that. It is why I cannot be mad at you - could never be mad at you.::

"Why," she cleared her throat, her voice tiny. Afraid to ask the question. Because, she was afraid she already knew the answer. "Why would you be mad at me?"

::Because, you brought me back forever, Rose. My dear Rosie. I cannot die. Or rather, I cannot stay dead. I've died, oh, so many times since that day. In so many, many ways.::

"And I did that to you. God. Jack, I'm so sorry! I never meant -" she choked, slid down from her chair to kneel in front of him, reaching out with one shaking hand to lay it on the glass between them. "I'm so sorry," she continued softly.

::I understand why you did it. It was an act of love. I was upset for a long time. But never at you, even after I found out why. I was mad at the Doctor. For leaving me, for never explaining.::

She stared at him with a stricken expression, beyond words.

::Do not feel sorry for me, dearheart. I have been able to see so much, experience so much. I'm older than the Doctor, can you believe? By, oh, _so_ many years. I've had great loves, and little loves. And through it all, the two of you have been there for me. Different faces, different times. We'll never be linear again. But that doesn't matter. Because I love you both in a way that transcends time and appearance.::

"And...and we love you. Jack. Boe." she curled forward, her voice thick with tears, and pressed herself to his glass. "I'm sorry I did this to you. I'm sorry you've suffered. But I am _so_ glad that I haven't lost you."

ooOO00OOoo

She visited him often. They shared stories - the ones that were safe. He told her about working on Earth, about watching over her while she grew up. About taking over Torchwood after Canary Wharf; about turning it into something good. She told him about how and why she regenerated. About the Doctor building the bridge to Pete's World. Neither of them talked about the elephant in the room: why she wasn't with the Doctor now. The closest they got was when she asked him to call her Melody.

He taught her so many things. How to focus her telepathy; how to block out other telepaths, as well as how to let them in. He shared with her his knowledge of time, explained things he'd learned back when he was a Time Agent. It didn't quite match up with what she'd learned from her own observations, but that wasn't a surprise. She saw the world as only a Time Lord could.

He taught her how to hide her emotions, how to play along when she met people in different times; people with different morals and codes of conduct. How to pretend that she knew someone when she didn't, or how to pretend she didn't when she did. She became better at acting, so much better than she'd ever been. She learned how to observe everything around her, to pick up on the slight nuances of those around her to better hide her foreknowledge of events. And then, her training complete, he gave her his old vortex manipulator.

"You still have it?" She gasped in shock.

::One of the few things I've carried with me. It is rather portable.:: He directed her to a cabinet across the room, holding various knick knacks and mementos from his long life. ::In the back, under the perception filter.::

She focused her mind. She'd known the filter was there, of course. One of the first things he'd taught her was how to see through psychic paper, perception filters. But she'd always respected his privacy too much to pry. "I don't see - oh, there it is. Wow. It looks so worn out. Does it still work?" She retrieved it and brought it over to the table set in front of his tank.

::No. The Doctor disabled it ages ago. But. You should be able to repair it. Or, at least, use it as a blueprint to build your own.::

She stared down at the device, with so many intricate parts, and sighed. "Well, I guess we better find out."

ooOO00OOoo

It took her a couple of months. Between classes and tests, she could only devote so much time to it. But it got easier once she'd graduated, and she eventually managed to make herself a vortex manipulator. She was overjoyed the first time she managed a small hop in time. She missed traveling with the Doctor so much, seeing all the places through all of space and time. Even if she could never be with him again, she could now at least wander the universe the way he did.

It wasn't nearly as enjoyable as the TARDIS, of course. She understood why the Doctor had called it 'quick and dirty' all those years ago. It required an enormous amount of concentration for her to land where she wanted. And it took her years to get it right. She wouldn't ever tease him about getting landings wrong ever again. If she ever got a chance to see him, that was.

One of the first places she landed was the Gamma Forests, a small colony world without any adventure to be had. Melody didn't care. Just traveling again was worth so much. Of course, there was one other thing she'd forgotten about the advantages of traveling via the TARDIS: translation circuits. She had a hell of a time simply introducing herself. Because, of course, the software the people used was grossly outdated. Instead of Melody Pond, they were calling her River Song. After two weeks of it, she rather got used to the name.

_And it's not a bad idea to change my name again, actually_, she thought as she made her way to Boe's house once she'd made it back to the fifty-first century. _I bet Madam is still looking for me. And I know they've got time travel technology. No reason to make it easier for them to find me. _

Changing her name turned out to be no more difficult than refusing to answer to anything else. They could call her Mels, Melody, Pond, or whatever else they fancied. But so long as she only answered to some variation of River Song, well. River Song she became.

She'd once asked the Doctor why he was called Doctor instead of a proper name. He'd given her a long look and then asked her what her name was.

"Rose, of course," she'd answered in some confusion.

"And if, the next time you were to introduce yourself to someone, you claimed to be Delilah, well. They would know you as Delilah, wouldn't they? And if you stopped answering to Rose, and only answered to Delilah..."

"I'd be Delilah, I guess."

It had seemed such a novel concept at the time. She had been Rose because she had chosen to be Rose. And now, she was River Song for the same reason. Some things really were that simple.

Of course, it ended up not mattering one whit. Because they found her anyway. She was in the library, flipping through a book about hypnosis. She'd never quite managed to lose her hope that one day she'd be free of Madam's training.

"You didn't really think a name change could keep us away, did you?" Madam smiled, "Rose Tyler."

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: Sooo...no excuses. I just forgot to post yesterday. Whoops!


	20. Chapter 19

River froze.

After all these years, after so much time away from Madam, peace had finally begun to seep into her heart. To have Madam show up now…

Madam's Slendermen appeared on either side of her (how utterly unfair was it that she could only remember their existence when they were in front of her) and River bolted for the back of the library. There was an emergency escape back here. If she could just find – she came to a stop, wondering what it was she was running from. Shaking her head at her own paranoia, she turned around to go back to her table, only to be grabbed by two Slendermen. Suddenly remembering why she was trying to escape, she sought to throw them off, but to no avail. Their long fingers gripped her arms bruisingly, while a third approached and deftly stripped her of the weapon she'd taken to always carrying with her.

"Now, now," Madam chided mildly, "is that any way to treat us? After all we've done for you?"

"What? Like brainwashing me to kill the man I love?" River spat, trying to break free.

Madam tsk'ed in disappointment. "What is the Doctor, Rose?"

"Enemy."

River stared in horror. Had she really said that? She sagged in the Slendermen's grip. She'd always known that the conditioning was still there. But hope was so hard to quash completely.

"Very good, my dear," Madam said fondly.

For the first time in her life, River recognized that fondness for what it was: that of a master for its well-trained pet. It was the same tone she would have used for an animal. River lifted her head and barred her teeth in a silent snarl. She was no tame pet. She was the Bad Wolf. "I won't help you," she vowed, her voice a distinctive rumble. "Torture me. Brainwash me. Put me in a cage. But I won't help you. I will not be controlled. _I am the Bad Wolf._"

For the briefest of moments, fear flickered in Madam's eyes. Then she smiled. "Oh, I don't know about that." She turned towards the door behind her. "What do you think, Doctor?"

There was an embarrassed cough, then the Doctor stepped into the room. He leaned casually against the door and folded his arms, as if he hadn't just been caught eavesdropping. "I think, that underestimating the Bad Wolf is a poor decision on your part." He gave a slight bow, his lips twisted sardonically. "By all means, go ahead."

"Doctor-" River started, but immediately cut off when one of the Slendermen pressed her gun against her head. Despite herself, a whimper escaped.

"Don't!" Instantly, the Doctor's playful demeanor evaporated and he straightened, taking one powerful stride into the room.

"Ah, ah, ah," Madam sing-songed and the Slenderman thumbed the safety off. "I wouldn't, if I were you. She's already on her fourth body, and not even a century old yet. That's worse than you, if memory serves. And what are the chances she has a full set? How many is that anyway?"

The Doctor swallowed and relaxed his aggressive stance, taking the smallest of steps back.

Madam smiled kindly. "There's a good boy. Now then!" she waved a hand negligently and the Slendermen hauled the protesting River away.

"Don't listen to them, Doctor! Whatever they want, don't-" the last Slenderman vanished from the Doctor's view at the same time her voice cut off.

The Doctor blinked and looked around. His hearts were racing, and he was tensed for conflict, but all he saw before him was a woman with an odd-looking eyepatch staring at him in the middle of the library. "What happened?" he asked, befuddled. "Where is River Song? I heard her voice…" he glanced around, as if expecting her to emerge from around a stack of books.

"Oh, she's long gone, I'm afraid."

The Doctor's eyes snapped to the woman's. He knew that voice. He stalked towards her aggressively. "Where is she! What did you do with her?"

The woman merely smiled. "Oh, stop with the posturing. You aren't going to hurt me. You and I both know that."

He stalled in the face of her words. She was right. But the fact that she knew him so well was worrisome.

"Let's get down to business, shall we? Your precious River Song has gone on a little trip. But as I'm so generous, I'll let you see her again. All you have to do, is meet her at her destination. Simple."

"Simple," the Doctor parroted dubiously.

"Quite." The woman continued, unperturbed by his tone. She pulled out an old fashioned calendar from the pocket of her jacket. "Now, let's see here…" she flipped through the pages, stopping near the back. "Ah! Here we are. Lake Silencio, Utah. United States of America, Earth…" she paused, giving him a significant look. "Oh, but you know the place, don't you?"

The Doctor nodded slowly. He knew what this was. He'd found out about his death date accidentally. This was them telling him officially.

"Splendid!" she consulted her notebook again. "April 22, 2011," she glanced at her watch. "How's 2pm for you?"

He laughed darkly. She sounded like she was setting up an afternoon social, not plotting his eternal demise. "You've gone to such trouble to organize all this. Surely you don't think I'm so stupid as to not realize it's a trap."

"On the contrary, Doctor. I have the utmost respect for you." She put her calendar away and folded her hands, settling on the edge of a nearby table and giving him her full attention.

There was a pause as they studied each other.

"You'll come," she asserted confidently. "How can you not? It's River Song. Your eternal Achilles' heel."

"I'll save her from you."

"Oh, Doctor." She shook her head and her voice was laced with pity. "It's not her you should be trying to save. It's yourself. But you won't. You'll stand there and let her shoot you through the hearts. You won't have a choice."

The Doctor rocked back on his heels, stunned. That she was so confident in her plans to tell him so plainly was frightening. Then it hit him. Eyes wide, he said, "it's fixed. You fixed it! How?"

The woman smiled. "See? And on so few clues, too. Brilliant." She stood, brushing imaginary specks of dust from her skirt. "I really must be off. See you in 2011, Doctor." She walked calmly past him and through the door.

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor scrubbed a hand down his face before turning and walking back to the TARDIS. Here at the end of his life, it all made so much sense. All the little things he'd not understood before were coming together in one perfect pattern. Why was River in jail? Because she'd killed someone. But who had she killed? For the longest time, he'd not known. Now he did. She killed him. And he killed her. What a neat little circle they made. Was there no end to their drama? No way for them to simply live in peace?

He entered the TARDIS, softly closing the door behind him. He leaned against it, shutting his eyes wearily, listening to the Old Girl hum soothingly in his mind. As he always did when it was just the two of them, he spoke to her in the musical language of his people, the only language with words to describe some of the things he saw and felt.

«This is it,» he told her. «I don't know what to do. River has been captured, my death a fixed point.» One lone tear traced its way down his cheek. «Is this really how our story ends? So much love, and still we kill each other.» He swallowed thickly. «I don't want it to end.»

"And so it shan't, my Doctor."

His eyes popped open. Golden eddies of light swirled all over the console room, and from beyond the central pillar, a person stepped into sight.

"Rose!" he cried, leaping forward.

She held up a hand, arresting his forward motion. "My Doctor." Her eyes glowed golden, wisps of time escaping them every time she blinked.

Bad Wolf stood in front of him, in all her glory.

"So sad…always so lonely. I promised you forever, and forever is what you will get. And I'm so sorry, but it must be this way. I want you safe."

"I don't know what to do," he said helplessly. "Both our deaths are fixed-"

«Are they?»

He paused, stunned by her question. Said in Gallifreyan, those two words were layered with such meaning that it could take him years to tease their full import out. Which could very well be her intention. But though her words required study to understand, their impact was immediate: hope.

"Rose…" he whispered, in awe of all she had done/was doing/would do for him.

She glided towards him silently, eddies of time wafting off her with every beat of her heart. She raised her hand, placing it against his cheek.

He closed his eyes and leaned into the caress, trapping her hand beneath his own. "I still don't know what to do," he confessed quietly.

«Time Lord.» she chided.

Once again, he was rocked by her words. Time Lord. Lord of Time. Time's Champion. The One Who Sees Time As It Is. All that and more contained within his title. She was telling him to look at it with the eyes of a Time Lord. To use the abilities he'd left dormant for more than three centuries.

She pulled her hand away and he stared at her in panic. "Don't go," he pleaded.

"I must," she said regretfully, "the Daleks await."

They shared one last look before she retreated back behind the column to evaporate, taking the vortex with her. Despite himself, the Doctor dashed up the ramp and around the rotor to stare at where she'd been. Gone. To his personal past where she would vanquish the Dalek Emperor and he would give his life for hers.

«Oh, my precious girl.»


	21. Chapter 20

The Doctor laid a hand on the time rotor, stroking it gently. «What would I do without you two to support me?» he murmured. Then he put his hands on the controls. Because when an all-powerful goddess of space and time gave you a mission, you damn well did it.

As he had a lifetime ago, he set coordinates for farther down the time vortex, refraining from selecting a specific point along its wall to land on. It was a matter of heartbeats to arrive, and he input a complex series of commands that resulted in the TARDIS taking up a tempo-spatially stationary orbit over the section of the vortex associated with River's time in The Library. Once locked in place, he danced around the console to the scanner. «All right, Sexy. What can you see?»

The TARDIS' scanner swept over the area in question, guided by his mind. The first pass revealed nothing out of the ordinary. Just a fixed point marking the end of River Song's life. Undeterred, he changed the parameters and looked again. Bad Wolf was counting on him to solve this puzzle. He would not let her down.

ooOO00OOoo

Patience had never been one of the Doctor's virtues. And the ability to jump past the boring bits of life had done nothing to encourage in him the skill. So when at the end of two weeks, (thirty-two Gallifreyan days, times 78.4392 hours in a day equaled roughly 2,510 hours of searching, or 104.5 human days his mind gibbered) he'd yet to find anything helpful, he decided to take a break from it all and go visit his family.

ooOO00OOoo

A blue police box winked in and out of existence on the front lawn of the Tyler mansion.

"Mu-um!" a young, male teenage voice called over the din. "Doctor's here!"

"Aye, aye, quit your yell'n. I heard 'im too."

The Doctor smiled as he approached the front door. Once upon a time, he had feared Jackie Tyler above anything else. Now he found the chaos of her family soothing. He raised a fist to knock on the door.

"Don't you dare! So help me Doctor, if you knock on that door…"

The Doctor froze. Well. Maybe he still feared her a little. He opened the door and stuck his head through the crack. "Yes. Well, um. Hello!" He waved at the camera guarding the entryway.

"What are you doing standing there, ya daft alien? Get in here!" Jackie yelled from somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen.

The Doctor came in and, as he was closing the door, heard pounding footsteps on the second floor race down the hallway towards the stairs. Good old Tony Tyler. Never walked anywhere when he could run. A gangly youth threw himself down the last few steps and sped towards the Doctor at an alarming speed. The Doctor just laughed, catching the youth's outstretched hands in his own. The two of them bound in place, each of them repeating a chorus of the other's name.

"Tony!"

"Doctor!"

"Tony!"

"Doctor!"

"To-" the Doctor abruptly cut off, dropped Tony's hands, and stepped away, straightening his cuffs in a nervous gesture. "Yes. Uhm. Very nice to see you, Tony." He turned to face the person who had just come through the doorway to the left. "Jackie."

"Oh, posh," Jackie said, flipping her hands as if to shoo away his suddenly formal demeanor. "C'mere you."

The Doctor broke out into a huge grin and swept Jackie up into a hug, twirling her around before returning her to her feet.

"Leave off, leave off," she said, giggling like a schoolgirl. "I'm too old for all this."

"Nonsense, Jacks," a male voice said from behind them, and they all turned to see Pete Tyler shedding his coat. "Never too old to have a little fun. Specially with an old friend."

"Pete!" the Doctor cried, flitting over and air kissing both of the man's cheeks while Jackie and Tony laughed. Even after all these years, he still wasn't used to that particular habit of the Doctor's.

"Come on in, everyone. Tea's on." Jackie said, leading the way into the kitchen. Once there, she received a proper kiss from her husband before pouring the tea.

"Now then, Doctor. What's all this about?" Pete asked after they had all taken a seat around the kitchen table.

"I need some advice," the Doctor admitted, sipping from his TARDIS blue mug printed with the words 'trust me, I'm the Doctor' printed on it.

"About what?" Tony asked.

"I've been given a mission. A goal. Quest, if you will. If I can succeed, I will win the one thing I want in all of time and space."

"And if you don't?" Jackie asked, more familiar than anyone else with how often things didn't turn out quite the way the Doctor wanted.

The Doctor winced. "I die, permanently and without regeneration."

"Blimey," Tony said, leaning back in his chair.

They all took a moment to absorb the Doctor's words.

"This thing," Tony asked. "Is it worth it?"

"Without a doubt, it is."

"So what's the problem, then? What do you have to do?" Jackie asked.

The Doctor took a long drink from his mug. "Alter two different fixed points in time. One of which I've already lived through."

Pete and Jackie shared a speaking glance before Pete spoke, obviously having been designated as the Devil's Advocate. "Are you sure that's a good idea? You've told us about Reapers and the like. Isn't that what causes them to appear?"

The Doctor wiggled his head back and forth as he thought. "Hmm. Yes and no. You cannot alter the facts of a fixed point, but there is still some room to maneuver. For example: Pompeii exploding may be a fixed point, but I can save a small family from the blast."

"What are the facts?" Pete asked, pulling out a pen and paper so he could write them down.

"The Library is infested with Vashta Nerada. People are stored on CAL. River Song electrocutes herself."

"And what are you trying to change?"

The Doctor dropped his eyes, staring into his tea. "River Song's death."

"Hmm. Tricky." Pete slid the paper over to the center of the table so his wife and son could look at it.

All three studied it while the Doctor made a bet with himself as to how many jammy dodgers he could shove in his mouth at one time.

"Well, what about – Doctor!" Jackie looked up to see him shoving the fourth jammy dodger into his mouth, cheeks puffed up like a chipmunk. "What are you doing? Stop that!" She smacked his hand away when he reached for a fifth.

The Doctor pulled his hand out of slapping range, cradling it to his chest. His wounded expression lost some of its force, paired as it was with his overstuffed cheeks.

"Honestly. What are you, four?" She swept the plate up from the table and dropped it on the counter safely beyond his reach. But not before he managed to liberate two more, forcefully cramming them into his mouth, eyes glittering with triumph.

"Time Lord, indeed," Jackie huffed, reclaiming her seat while Pete laughed behind his hand.

Tony didn't even bother doing that.

Once they all settled down, Jackie tried again. "If she has to be electrocuted, can you change the voltage?"

The Doctor shook his head regretfully. "No. Has to be a certain amount. Otherwise CAL…won't…" he trailed off, face going blank as his mind raced. "Jackie Tyler, you are brilliant!" the Doctor cried, leaping to his feet. He picked her up, chair and all, swinging her around as he danced across the kitchen. "Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I say." He set her down and gave her a smacking kiss on the lips. "I'm going to name a nebula after you!" Then he tore from the house, laughing madly all the way. They heard the front door slam, then a few seconds later, the TARDIS ground to life.

The Tyler family stared at each other in shock. When the sound of the TARDIS finally faded away completely, Jackie grunted, swept the back of her hand across her lips and said, "that's Himself for you."

ooOO00OOoo

River Song cried. She screamed. She threatened and begged. But nothing could stop the Slendermen from hauling her away from the Doctor. She knew what was going to happen. Knew her escape from Madam all those years ago had been too easy. They were going to put her back inside that spacesuit. And then she was going to kill the Doctor.

She raged, reached inside for the Wolf that gave her strength. The Slendermen pounced. Sliding through her mental barriers in that peculiar way they had that left no trace of them in her mind. And now she saw how they did it. It was no skill of theirs that hid their existence. No technique she could fight against. It was her. Her own mind. Their very existence was so horrifying to her in such an elemental way that she couldn't even feel it, understand it. Her mind was in full retreat, refusing any and all contact, going so far as to deny the formation of memories associated with them. Her mind would not touch them.

But they could touch _her._ Could, and had. It was they who had implanted the training. They who had hidden the conditioning. Which was why neither she, nor her therapists, could find it. It was hidden in that place within her where she could not look.

She saw now. She understood. But with the understanding came a faint sense of déjà vu. How many times had she discovered this? How many times had she forgotten? She wept as they reached into her soul, grabbed one specific thread, and pulled. All over her mental landscape, massive cobwebs she'd never been able to see before lit up. A macabre interwoven strand of Christmas lights, dripping with hatred for the Doctor and a lust for death.

In the physical world, River Song opened her eyes. And smiled.


	22. Chapter 21

Author's Note: So. Life has turned into one giant stress-ball with no end in sight. Solution? Post all of Unintentional in one go so I have one less thing to worry about. Hold onto your hats!

ooOO00OOoo

There were two people inside her head. One, named Rose, who loves and hates the Doctor in equal measure. She is the one who wants to kill him, the one trained to do it. The one in control.

The other is trapped, chained once more deep within the recesses of her own mind in a place, she realizes now, she never really escaped from. She paces within the confines of her cage, searching desperately for a way out. A way to stop the brainwashed Rose from killing the Doctor. This is Bad Wolf, and she will not be tamed.

The Slendermen know she is here. Know, and don't care. They are unconcerned with her. Even Bad Wolf is helpless before them, unable to accept their existence. As with the rest of the universe, Bad Wolf shies away from them, cannot look at them. They stand in her blind spot. It is everything she can do to simply claw her way past them to the forefront of her brain. Slowly, she finds cracks in the web of the conditioning, eases her way between them. She knows when she gets too close: she blanks out and finds herself in odd corners of her mind. But then she turns, sees the webs, remembers. More and more she succeeds. Bits and bobs of her escape the cage to press against the glass wall of her enclosure. Out of jail, but not out of prison. She doesn't have any control. But she can _see_ at least. Can tell what the small, broken part of herself is doing. She is walking.

Bad Wolf frowns in concentration, trying to make sense of what she is seeing. The nausea makes it difficult though, amplified by the rushing of blood in her ears. The world waves sickeningly back and forth in front of her and for a brief moment, Bad Wolf is glad that she is not the one in control. Vomiting inside the space suit would not be pretty.

She presses against the glass, no not glass, but something… She presses flat like a child outside a sweet shop. This close, she can finally begin to make sense of the things Rose is seeing and feeling. Her vision waves, because she is underwater. The rushing sound is waves over the microphone. Spacesuits are meant for space, so why is she underwater? Whatever their destination, it is a long walk to get there, and Bad Wolf spends the time inspecting the wall before her. She touches it, and recoils when some of it comes away on her hand, the substance beading like oil on water. She swipes frantically at her face and clothes, trying to get it _off_. It doesn't roll away like it should; it smears, soaking into her skin – her mind. And suddenly she understands. This isn't the outer wall of her prison. It's Rose. The part of her psyche molded by Madam and hidden by the Slendermen. _This_ is the part that lusts for the Doctor's death. Bad Wolf, created out of nothing more than love for him and a desire to keep him safe, cannot understand.

And without that understanding, she cannot pass through. Bad Wolf and Rose. Oil and water. Two completely different substances that are utterly unable to mix. The personality of Rose was tissue-thin, but may as well have been three miles high and ten miles thick. She was still trapped.

The water began to brighten, the sand sloping upwards and Bad Wolf began to panic. She just _knew_ that the Doctor would be waiting for them on the beach. And if Rose was still in control when they saw him… It didn't bear consideration. Bad Wolf studied the entity that was Rose. She would _never_ understand the impulse to kill the Doctor. But…perhaps…she could _accept._ She closed her eyes and reached out, her hands sinking into the twisted logic of wanting to kill your lover.

_Don't understand. Simply accept. Accept._ She chanted to herself.

The oil of Rose Tyler crept up her arms, sinking into her pores as the water broke over her head. She stepped onto wet sand, blinking in confusion as she felt the two separate impulses fighting within her.

_Kill him,_ whispered Rose.

_Save him,_ whispered Bad Wolf.

"River," whispered the Doctor.


	23. Chapter 22

There he was. The Doctor. Love for him swelled from both sides of her heart, drowning out –for the moment- the part of Rose that whispered, _kill_.

"Let me see you?" he asked, a note of pleading in his voice. When she froze, afraid to make any movements, he continued, "It's all right."

With shaking hands, she raised the visor, the conflicting impulses to throw herself into his arms and to pull her gun on him fighting for control.

He smiled, and it broke her heart.

"Hello." His voice was so soft, so filled with love and understanding.

Inside, Bad Wolf howled and Rose laughed.

"Doctor, I can't-" Bad Wolf had won the voice, but Rose controlled the hands.

"Shh. It's all right. I understand," he comforted her, voice suspiciously thick.

Her hand crept toward her side.

"Doctor! Please run –" slowly, slowly the gun rose. Didn't he see it? Didn't he know what she was meant to do? "Leave!" she screamed, her hand horribly steady. She tried to turn it, to point the gun at her own head. Hadn't she done it once already? Killed herself so as not to kill him? But then she realized – that was what the suit was for. A spacesuit meant to deflect space debris would have no trouble with a bullet. But, they'd been building this since before she was Melody. How long had they known?

When she'd seen him on the TARDIS, in the first few days she'd spent in this body, he'd seemed so infinitely sad. She knew why. She felt it. Not only was she trying to kill him, she was going to succeed. Here, and now. Because time was fixed.

Tears streamed down her face

"Please, please," she begged him, though for what, she wasn't sure. Even he was helpless in the face of the reapers. She'd seen it. "Please…"

"It's all right," he assured her again, the only thing he seemed able to say "Don't fight it. Some things are meant to be."

The sound of her scream was drowned out by the rapport of her gun.

He stumbled backwards, almost falling from the force of the bullet. Oh god. She'd _shot_ him!

He hunched over, legs unsteady. Wheezed in a breath. Looked up at her. And _smiled._

Forgiveness. From the man she loved as she murdered him.

"I guess this really is my last chance so say it." He took a deep breath; fought his way up right. The gold of regeneration leaking around the edges. "I – "

Twice more she shot him, devastatingly accurate. Once in each heart. He reared back, stumbled; fell, and went still.

The regeneration energy evaporated.

Rose laughed once, and went forever silent. The Doctor was dead. Numb, River turned away, stepping back into the cool stillness of the lake water.

_Dead. Dead! The Doctor is dead._ Her mind gibbered over and over while in the deepest part of her, Bad Wolf howled.

The conditioning was still there. Would always be there. But, now satisfied, it no longer held any power over her. She could meet a past version of the Doctor, (she would never be meeting a future version) and he would be perfectly safe from her. Because – oh, god! – she'd already killed him.

Gentle hands caught her. Stripped her of her suit and redressed her in her clothes. They took her from place to place. Made her sit; instructed her to eat. She did what they wanted; what did it matter now? She was dead. Had been since she pulled the trigger. Her body just hadn't caught up yet. Only one thing got through to her from beyond the haze.

"...there you go, Sweetie. Home, safe and sound. You did such a good job. Why don't you sit down? There's a good girl. Oh, I know. You've had a bit of a shock. Life takes us that way sometimes. But don't you worry. It'll fade soon enough. You can do whatever you want, now. Won't that be nice? We won't bother you again…"

She closed her eyes and drifted off; looking for the silence of death.


	24. Chapter 23

She could hear him. In her dreams, she could hear him. Cool arms hold her close; a hand cards through her mess of curls, no doubt making it uncontrollably wild. Lips kiss her forehead, rain down upon her cheeks. Call her by her name with love. Begs her to open her eyes. In her dream, she burrows close; wraps her arms around him, tucking her head under his chin. She holds onto his voice even as she rejects his words. She will never see him again. But so long as she has her dreams, she has this.

"Oh, River, my love," his voice is both sad and amused, with a hint of deeply buried anger. "So willing to give up the world? You shouldn't do that. There are still so many wonderful things to see."

She ignores him and holds him tighter, squeezing until he lets out an undignified squeak. She twitches. He's never made that sound before.

"Come on, darling," he coaxes, pulling away just far enough to gently tilt her head up with one finger. "Open your eyes. See me. You didn't kill me. Not even a scratch; it was all a trick. I had to get the Silence off our backs – and I had to satisfy your conditioning. Please, open your eyes."

Soft lips press against hers for the briefest of moments and it is that action, more than any of his words, that prompts her to open her eyes. She gasps. He is so close; his eyes fairly glow with love and adoration. He holds her tight within his arms, as if to never let her go.

"There, see?" he says, and drops another tender kiss upon her mouth, "I am safe, and so are you." Over his shoulder, she can see the dark wood paneling of the TARDIS' library.

"But," she objects, her thoughts awhirl.

"This is me," he tapped the side of his head, "fresh from Lake Silencio. Found a loophole in the rules of the fixed point. I was there. You shot me – nice aim by the way – but I wasn't hurt."

"How?" She can't think, can barely breathe as the full import of his words sink into her. He was at the beach? She shot him but he was fine? But that meant… She cried out and pulled away, surprising him into letting her go. "What are you doing here? Get out!" she screamed.

"What?" He stood from the couch they had been reclining on, and she scrambled to put the length of it between them. "Rose-"

"_Don't call me that!_ Don't ever call me that!"

He stood there helplessly, one hand extended towards her in supplication. What went wrong? It was supposed to work! Bad Wolf had promised… "Is it the deception? I'm sorry. I know it was cruel. I came to you as soon as it was safe." He took a step towards her and she bared her teeth and _growled_ at him. He dropped his hand in shock. "You growled at me!" Then, "not a very good growl, mind. You make a very Bad Wolf."

His attempt at joke fell flat.

"Get. Out."

He ignored the absurdity of her ordering him off his own ship. "No. We can work this-"

"OUT!"

Silence.

She dropped her head, agressive stance relaxing, but he knew better than to approach. "I won't hurt you again," she said, her voice filled with firm resolve.

"Darling, you didn't hurt me. Look, see? I'm fine!" He slid his jacket off, laid it on the back of the couch, and turned a small circle, arms outstretched as he demonstrated his lack of wounds.

She licked her lips.

Seeing that, he relaxed. That was more like the River Song he knew.

"She'll wake up."

The Doctor blinked, thrown by her words. "River, there's no one else here. It's just you and me on the TARDIS."

"No. Her." River touched her temple. "You have to let me go."

The Doctor straightened. Someone else was in River's head? Unacceptable. "Who is it?" he demanded.

"_Rose,"_ River hissed.

Well. Blimey. That…complicated things. "Rose is in your head? As a separate personality?"

"No. Yes." River shook her head, curls tumbling about wildly. "She wants to kill you!"

And he understood. For whatever reason, River had come to associate the name Rose with the conditioning to kill him. Explained her severe reaction to the name, earlier. "River," he took a step towards her and watched with a critical eye as she backed away from him fearfully. She didn't understand; not yet. But she would. He would make sure of it.

"River," he repeated, and the tone of command had her glancing at him, "you aren't crazy. You don't have split personalities. That's just regeneration. One person dies in the fire, and another one walks away from the ashes. Same memories, different person. It's natural to have opposing viewpoints about the same events. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to smack a younger regeneration for doing – or not doing – something. What I thought of then as a clever move seems now to be foolhardy. You are Rose, and Rose is you. But you are also River. As she is River." He quirked an awkward grin at her. "Part of why Time Lords keep the same name across regenerations. It's hard enough to go through different personalities as you age. You need to focus on the similarities to tie all your various selves together. Just remember that you _are_ the same person – even as you are not."

He paused. "And as for your _conditioning_," he refused to use one of her names to identify the horrible brainwashing she'd gone through, "are you listening?"

She nodded miserably.

"It's been satisfied. Just like coding on a computer, it has parameters that had to be met. And they _have_ been. It's not intelligent. Think about it. Do you want to kill me right now?"

"I never _wanted_ to!" she wailed. "But I did anyway!"

He strode towards her, dodging her flailing hands as she tried to keep him at bay. He wrapped his arms around her, refusing to let her push him away. Time after time she had stormed his defenses, carving out a place for herself within his hearts. The least he could do was return the favor. "A part of you did," he murmured into her hair. "But it doesn't now. _Listen."_

River was panicking. He was too close. She could hurt him. She would _kill_ him. Rose would wake up and the fight would begin again. She'd lost the first time, she would lose again – only this time he would die for real! Her heart was racing, her breathing quick and shallow; wide eyes stared at nothing as her mind called up ever more horrible ways that she would find herself hurting him. She felt something touch her, her mind, and she screamed, fists striking his chest hard enough to bruise. He bore it stoically before pulling her close again. The thing came back, again and again, brushing against her mind in a rhythmic caress.

Gradually, she recognized it for what it was. It was him. His mind, reaching out to hers. The very essence of her Doctor surrounding her in comfort and love in a way she'd never felt before.

::It's gone. It's gone. The conditioning is gone. You can relax. You never have to worry about it again. Relax.::

His voice in his mind soothed her, showed her that the parts of her that had been moulded by Madam were black or blackening. Thin, brittle twists that fractured and melted away with the lightest of touches. All that was left was swirling golden light, growing ever brighter as she shed the chains that had been on her for more than half her life. But even so. She'd done this before. Twice, she was convinced that she had removed all traces of Madam and the Silence from her mind. And twice, she'd been proven wrong. How could she be sure it wouldn't happen a third time? No. No, it was best if she just stayed away from him for good. It would hurt, god would it hurt –

The wild howl of a wolf cut through her thoughts, and River jolted in shock. She knew that howl, felt its meaning in her bones. Within her mind, the gold abruptly intensified, brightening exponentially until there was no corner of her being untouched by its radiance. Out of it, through it, _from_ it, an image of her younger self stepped forward, the wolf goddess of space and time.

::Doctor!:: River called, reaching out for him back along the telepathic connection he'd formed with her. ::Are you seeing this?::

::I am.:: He confirmed, wonder and awe in his voice.

_Doctor. River._ Bad Wolf whispered in her mind, touching them only softly with her immense power. _You need not be afraid. The Silence is gone from our mind, their time there only transient._

::Are you sure? How can you be sure?:: River objected. Arguing, in essence, with herself. ::You claimed to end the Time War when you killed the Dalek Emperor, then look at what happened at Canary Wharf! More Daleks! You were wrong then, you could be wrong now!::

Bad Wolf raised one sardonic eyebrow. _The Daleks you encountered at Canary Wharf were from the Cult of Skaro. They did not fight in the Time War with the Time Lords; they were, in fact, occupied with other things throughout the entirety of it. _She turned toward the dark corner of River's mind where the Doctor hovered in silence. «I love you, Doctor.»

River frowned, not understanding what Bad Wolf had said. But before she could begin to voice the question, the gold of Bad Wolf began to fade, dissipating and losing some of its brilliance as she vanished from the timeline – probably for the last time.

The Doctor withdrew from her mind, gently guiding her back to her physical form. It wasn't until she'd fully arrived that the true weight of Bad Wolf's message came clear. She was free. For the first time since she'd left her pink and yellow body behind, she was free.

And that's when the tears came.

The Doctor's arms came around her at about the same time she collapsed against him, his arms gentle as he cradled her to him, guiding them to sit and then lounge on the couch again. She gripped the his shirt in both her fists, twisting the fabric as she bent her head under the weight of her emotions. He said nothing, perhaps understanding that his presence, rather than his words, were what she really needed.

At first, the tears were of simple relief and joy. They'd made it. Despite everything that had been done to them, here they were, together again. She'd lost her life (multiple times) and her family. He'd lost…so much more. But they still had each other. But…the things she'd gone through to get here couldn't simply be forgotten, and her happy tears turned darker.

She'd been violated.

Stripped bare and gutted; her pure and selfless love had been twisted into something evil. How could she ever feel safe again? Her very mind had turned against her, used as a weapon against the one person she loved more than life itself. She had defied gods and monsters and the devil himself for this man – had defeated them all. But the one thing she couldn't beat was the sickness inside. Even Bad Wolf hadn't said anything about how to prevent it from happening again. Only that _this_ particular problem had been solved. Her mind was so vulnerable. _She_ was so vulnerable. And she had no way to defend herself.

And there was the anger, a hot gush of emotions burbling up. She pulled back and slapped him across the face with all of her strength, the force of the blow snapping his head to the side.

He didn't protest.

"Where were you!?" she screamed at him from inches away. "I needed you, and you weren't there. Where were you? For years – years! – the Silence had me. And every day. Every day I woke up, I'd tell myself: 'today's the day. Today the Doctor will find me.' They told me," she choked, stared at him with furious tears streaming down her face. "They told me how they got me. Said that you'd built that _damn_ bridge to Pete's World and that they had just walked right through without you noticing. They…said they were going to break me. That they were going to use me to kill you. But I said to myself that you were going to find me. You were going to save me from your enemies – who only wanted me because I loved you. Who could only get to me because you loved me. _You led them to me_ and then let me _rot_ with them! I waited," her voice dropped to a whisper, breaking over every word. "I waited for you. For so many years. I waited for you. To come for me. But that's not what happened, is it? You never came for me." She pulled away even more, never letting go of her white-knuckled grip on his shirt. "I stopped expecting you. After a while. Told myself that you – look at me!" She shook him violently back and forth when his eyes had slipped closed in anguish at her words. She stared hard at him, insisting that he not turn from her pain. "I believed that they'd just hidden me too well. That you _couldn't_ find me. But that's not right, either. _You weren't looking."_

She attacked him then, fury overcoming reason as her hands morphed into claws and she went for his eyes.

His face was blank and his hands were strong as he caught her wrists and redirected her energies to his chest. She dug in and he let go, moving his hands to steady her as she shredded cloth and flesh with her nails, spitting vitriol and accusations.

Time Lords were hardy, and generation after generation of genetic enhancements had only made them more so. So it wasn't until after she'd made him bleed that she came to her senses. She saw the blood on his chest and her hands, felt the slickness of it and it was like a bucket of ice water had been thrown in her face.

"Oh, god. Oh my god!" she reared back, away. Tried to escape him and the reality of what she'd done. She'd been so terrified of hurting him, and now – look.

But he lunged at her, heedless of his wounds and her fear, "Don't – don't leave me!" he cried, his hands iron bars on her arms.

His fear sparked hers in turn. "Leave? No!" she dove back down, used the sleeves of her shirt, the ragged edges of his, to wipe away the blood. Saw the healing gashes underneath. Fear slid into regret. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Doctor!" She looked up at him, eyes wide with remorse.

"Hush." He cupped her face in his hands. "Don't you dare apologize to me. I deserve much worse."

"No," she choked on the last of her tears, "you don't."

"Hush," he kissed her gently, tears and all, hands sliding into her hair and around her shoulders. He leaned back until he was reclining on the couch and drew her down so that she lay with her head on his chest. This close, she could see that they were only minor scratches, not as deep or as wide as she'd feared. Either Time Lords were phenomenal healers, or her mind had made it out to be worse than she'd thought. No permanent damage.

"I'm sorry," she said between slow, purposeful breaths, trying to get herself back under control. "I'm sorry."

He grunted a reproach as if to say 'Didn't I tell you not to apologize?' and rubbed a hand soothingly down her back. _"I'm_ sorry," he said after a long moment.

"No!" she tried to pick her head up; to frown and argue as he tried to take the blame upon himself.

"Nope." He tightened his hold, held her head to his chest until she subsided with a grumble. "Your turn to listen." He shifted them until she lay along the length of him, her knees on either side of his left leg. Even completely stretched out as they were, it was still an intimate position and she had to fight off a blush. He took a deep breath, let it out, and she heard utter contentment in the sound.

Unthinkingly, she turned her head and kissed the skin under her cheek.

He made a happy sound and squeezed her shoulders. "That's one."

_One?_ She thought.

"You are absolutely right," he began, his voice both intimate and far away. "I should have looked for you. If I'd known the details of the crash, I would have. After I learned who River Song was, I looked into it. Fishy. Very fishy. One of the problems with how the Silence edit themselves out of beings' memories is the way it has nothing to fill the hole _with._ Just a blank period of time for everyone involved. Of course, I didn't know who the Silence were, yet. No guarantee I would have figured it out. Still, I would have looked. So there's that to apologize for."

"Doctor, no. You can't-"

He frowned down at her, placing a finger against her lips. "Hush!" he insisted. "My turn."

She kissed his finger and his face brightened. "Two," he breathed as she settled against him again. "Now, where was I before I was so rudely interrupted?" She giggled and he kissed her mess of curls. "Ah, yes. I'm sorry I left you at the university so long. I didn't know what to do to help you with the conditioning. I'd just about given up on finding a proper solution and was going to just wing it like always when the Silence took you. And after that, well. I avoided Lake Silencio like it had a plague until I had a way around the fact that it was a fixed point."

"Yes, how did you do that?"

He tapped her on the nose. "Spoilers."

"Spoilers?" she huffed.

"Well, I mean. Sort of spoilers. Half spoilers?" Then, "better not risk it."

She rolled her eyes.

He carded his fingers into her hair, seeming to enjoy making the unruly mess even worse. "I'm sorry, but we aren't done with secrets. Not yet. My past is your future. You'll be seeing a lot of me, but it won't be sequential. Use that diary I gave you to keep track. You'll be needing it."

"Why's that? Why can't I just go with you now?"

He grimaced. "Stormcage."

"The maximum security prison? The long-term, only for war criminals, never-been-escaped-from prison? _That_ Stormcage?" She yelped.

"The same."

"But, why? I haven't-" she groaned and thumped her head down on his chest, making him grunt. "The Silence. Lake Silencio. They can't know. Augh! I'm going to jail for killing you." She thumped him a few more times – with her hand – until he captured it and kissed her fingertips before smoothing it on the other side of his chest from where her head rested. "Hope you remember this," she groused. "I love you enough to go to jail. To take the slow road while you get to run off and have adventures."

"Ah," he said, tracing the bones of her hand. "And that leads me to the next thing."

"Hmm?" she said after a protracted pause. The day was getting to her; it felt like weights had been tied to her eyelids and she was having trouble keeping track of the conversation. Especially with the soothing way he was drawing on the back of her hand.

"I'm sorry I can't count."

"Ummhmm."

"I said two minutes, but was off by five seconds. Inexcusable for a Time Lord."

She had no idea what he was talking about, and was too tired to try and figure it out. "Spit it out, Sweetie," she slurred, nuzzling into him.

He chuckled softly, the sound making his chest rumble and she grunted in annoyance. "River Song. Melody Pond. Rose Tyler."

Her eyes flew open, a wordless sound of protest escaping.

He bowed his head. His lips so, so close to her ear. "_Bad Wolf,"_ he breathed. "I love you."


	25. Chapter 24

She tilted her head to stare at him, sleep the farthest thing from her mind. "You..." she reached up, cupped his cheek with her hand. He nuzzled into it like a cat. "Say it again?" she breathed.

He looked into her eyes and spoke in a clear, strong voice. "I love you. All of you. Every you. Through all of time and in every incarnation, every one of me loves every one of you. No matter your appearance. No matter your age. This Time Lord loves you with fierce passion, clear understanding, warm hearts, and a cool head. Everything I am loves you through all of time and space." He repeated his declaration in the language of his people, encompassing all of the things that only that language could express, «Bad Wolf, I love you.»

Her hand flew to her mouth, and though tears welled, they did not spill. "Oh my god," she whispered, voice tremulous. "I-I hoped. But I never expected..."

He smiled, and her heart about stopped. "I assure you, it's the truth."

"I believe you!" she hastened to assure him. "It's just...wow. Epic."

He threw his head back and laughed; she smiled helplessly at him. She loved this man so much.

When he finally stopped, she took a deep breath. It was her turn. "Doctor. I love you. I don't know when it started, perhaps I always have. You took a small minded shop girl and showed her the universe. You showed me that I could do more, be more. Even when I had only one life, I still chose you over all the rest. I don't know what is to come. Trouble and adventures and wonder, I'm sure. And lots of running. But I don't care. I'll go to Stormcage. I'll wait it out. Because I still have you, and the knowledge that you love me." She laced her fingers with his. "Everyone of me loves everyone of you." She stretched up, he leaned down; they met in the middle, sealing their vows with a kiss.

It was slow and leisurely, an exploration of new ground as they learned each other. He flicked his tongue against her lips and she opened willingly for him. She shifted up to deepen the kiss and he groaned against her as she drug her body against his. He cradled her head in the palm of one hand, tilting it just right. Her hands fisted in the remnants of his shirt, shoving it aside to get to skin. She stroked him lightly and he returned the favor, sliding one hand down and under the hem of her shirt. She sighed into his mouth and he hummed in response.

She pulled back to breathe, and he took advantage, peppering her face with tiny, adoring kisses.

"Doctor," she said, unwilling that he should stop but needing to speak anyway. "Doctor."

"Hmm?" He arched up just enough to lightly bite the side of her neck and she let out a helpless whimper.

"Doctor, are we..."

He stopped and looked at her, face flushed pleasantly. "I'd like to."

She looked at him seriously. "You really want to? Not just for once." She couldn't keep the thread of hope out of her voice.

He smiled at her, pulling her down for a kiss, "yes."

ooOO00OOoo

They spent a year together, and crammed a lifetime of love into it. Each of them knew that this honeymoon period could not last. That she would eventually have to go out there and start living the things he remembered. But for now, they had each other.

They lay on their bed. She, stretched out on her stomach and still warm from their lovemaking. He was lounging next to her, drawing patterns and words with the tip of one finger on the soft skin of her back. Every once and a while, he would lean in and kiss her, as if reveling in the ability to do so. She could sympathize with the emotion.

She told the Doctor about meeting the Face of Boe. About the things Jack taught her in their conversations that would frequently stretch into the night.

"Ah!" the Doctor said with an air of someone who was finally managing to grasp the full picture. "I always wondered how you knew some of those things. Some of them I'd obviously taught you - I'll do that now - but others...well. I should have known they'd come from him."

"He's where I got the blueprint for my vortex manipulator."

"Hmm. A little more elegant than his, though. You made modifications?" The Doctor stretched out for the screwdriver he'd left on a nearby table and she followed the motion with her eyes appreciatively. He buzzed the sonic over the vortex manipulator when she passed it over. "Very nice," he said, studying the readings.

"Well, it's no TARDIS. But it lets me travel."

ooOO00OOoo

"No. Absolutely not. I refuse. You cannot convince me that Slephol replacing Stephan on 'All My Loves' was a good thing. Stephan was hands down my favorite character. I didn't even want to _watch_ 'All My Loves' once they'd killed him."

"Ah, but they didn't kill him."

"He fell towards the Event Horizon! With no chance of escape!"

"I assure you: Stephan is still alive."

"Well, that just makes it worse then. Still alive, but not around."

"He comes back."

"Ha!"

"He does! On a white horse, even."

"Oh, now you're just making things up."

ooOO00OOoo

River danced backwards away from the Doctor down the corridor in a skimpy thong and nothing else. In her hand was the bowtie she'd stolen.

"You'll never catch me!" she taunted.

The Doctor watched the way her movements made things...bounce. "Who says I want to?"

ooOO00OOoo

She howled with mirth, tears streaming down her face as she clutched her sides, rolling around on the bed. Across the room, the Doctor stood with his hands on his hips, flush with pride in nothing but a bowtie.

Finally, once she was able to breathe, she caved. "All right! I admit it. I'm a big fan of bow ties. They certainly have advantages."

"Of course! My fashion sense is flawless."

She just laughed, sat up, and motioned him closer. "Well," she said, placing a hand on his naked thigh, bowtie at eye level. "I certainly couldn't do _this_ with a regular tie." Then she leaned in, grabbed the correct bit of ribbon with her teeth, and pulled.

ooOO00OOoo

He brought her to the butterfly room.

"I...had no idea. Have you ever showed this to anyone?" His arms were around her waist and she draped hers over his, leaning back into him as she gripped the backs of his hands.

"Never intentionally," he said, kissing her temple. "A few people found it by wandering."

"But, why not share it?"

"It's...too personal. Like - Gallifrey, in a way. Beautiful on the outside but hiding a dark secret."

She considered his words, then tilted her head back and kissed him delicately on the jaw, images of butterflies feasting on corpses in the forefront of her mind.

ooOO00OOoo

He explained the mechanics behind the bridge to Pete's World to her. Told her exactly what he'd done to build it. She was awed, humbled, grateful.

Until he told her what it was made of.

"What?" she laughed. "You built me a bridge of diamonds!"

He did his best to frown, he'd known she'd react like this. But he found it exceedingly difficult to even feign anger with her for anything, living in such intense intimacy as they were. He thought he'd loved her before they'd shut the world away. But as the weeks passed and they spent more time together, he discovered parts of her he'd never known. And they only made him love her more.

"I could take you there," he offered, after a time. "To Pete's World, I mean. You could see them all again. Tony was just about to go to college, last time I was over there."

She quieted, traced empty designs on the blanket she was lying on. "You still see them?"

"I do. Go back for all major holidays. Stretch it out, of course. Been, oh, fifty or so years since I've seen them. It'll be about two months for them. Benefits of a time machine."

She leaned into him and he slung an arm over her waist, even as she kept her head lowered. "It's - good. To know that they're doing allright. I miss them, but..." she closed her eyes, made sure she wasn't facing him when she continued. "I think I should wait until the circle is closed. Something has to end it, yeah? For you, it was finding out who River Song was. But for me... I'm afraid - " she cut off, unable to voice her fear.

He held her close, and never mentioned it again.

ooOO00OOoo

They lived and loved for a time, but eventually she had to go.

They stood hand in hand in the doorway to the outside world, striving to hide their sadness from each other.

"I'm sorry, River." He ran the backs of his fingers against her cheek.

"It's alright," she said softly, her eyes bright with unshed tears. "Just more of the same, yeah? Fighting for our future."

"Just remember that you aren't fighting alone."

She reached up and pulled his head down for one final kiss before turning and exiting the TARDIS.

Jack Harkness, younger than she'd ever seen him, waited for her in her living room. He stood from her couch and took his hat off as men emerged from the entryway to her right and the bedroom to her left, bearing weapons aimed at her. "River Song?" he asked politely, as if they were at a dinner party and not in her apartment with armed guards on either side.

"Yes?" she said calmly, understanding that _this_ Jack had yet to meet Rose Tyler. In fact, he still probably worked for the Time Agency. He didn't grate along her nerves like his older self. "And who might you be?"

"Devin Weylan, ma'am," he reached up and pulled a badge from his jacket, the same one adorning the protective armor worn by the guards. "Captain of the third squadron, search and acquisition."

"Oh?" she raised her eyebrows.

"Yes ma'am. I'm here on behalf of the Time Agency to arrest you for the murder of the Doctor. Will you come quietly?"

River looked over her shoulder at the large blue box sitting in the doorway to her kitchen, then back at the man who would - one day far in his future - be one of her best friends. She burst out laughing.

Devin Weylan frowned at her. "This is no laughing matter, ma'am. I assure you that I am quite serious."

She smiled kindly. "Oh, I know. Do you have a date and location for the trial? Universal co-ordinates, please."

"Well, ma'am. These things take time..."

"Yes, love. And you work for the Time Agency." she paused. "I can give _you_ a time and location, should you prefer. Say, six months?"

Devin looked flustered, unsure as to how to handle the conundrum that was River Song.

Then, from through the door, the Doctor's muffled voice could be heard. "No, no. I got it!" He opened the door and stuck his head out, all of the guns instantly training on him. "There's no need. I got it." He glanced up and saw Devin, pointedly ignoring all the rest. "Oh, hello! Here to arrest her, are you? Poor man." Then he looked down at River. "I know when it is. 13.482/pine/N71.12. I'll see you there."

"All right, Sweetie."

He gave her a lingering kiss then waved to Devin and shut the door. River's expression was positively dreamy as the TARDIS took off and her apartment was filled with the sound of the universe. Behind her, Devin cleared his throat awkwardly.

"Was that really who I think it was?"

She turned around and gave him her most charming smile. "What do you think?"

"Does he know you kill him?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Then, why..."

She winked. "Spoilers."


	26. Chapter 25

Author's Note: There is no Demon's Run. Sorry people, I just couldn't make it work.

He came to her trial, as he said he would, and it threw everything the Time Agency was trying to do on its head.

Originally, they wanted to sentence her to death for what she'd done. But that was rather hard to do when the person who had been killed was up in your face telling you not to punish his murderer. Before it all had started, the Time Agency had scoffed at her when she'd said that she didn't need a defender. They had provided her one anyway, as per their rules, and now the poor man was just standing there in shock as the Doctor strode up and down the courtroom, utterly dominating the scene.

While the Doctor argued her case, (it could never be said that he pleaded anything) her lawyer leaned over and whispered, "does he know what you've been accused of?"

She smiled, watching her lover prance about the room. "He knows. He doesn't care."

"But...why not? You've already admitted to killing him. I'm sorry, but if I were in his place, I'd want you dead."

"And that's why he's the Doctor."

ooOO00OOoo

Sentencing was swift, her transportation to Stormcage, more so. She walked calmly down the corridor, not bothering to meet the eyes of her fellow convicts. She was here to serve her time, nothing more. Though she had to admit, a two hundred year sentence was more than a little daunting.

They led her to a surprisingly spacious cage, undid her manacles, and closed the door.

"Well, then," she said, looking at the depressing grey walls. "This is going to be fun."

"You have no idea, darling."

She whirled about in surprise, only to see the Doctor leaning oh-so-casually against the TARDIS in the hall across from her cell. She smiled, "Hello, Sweetie."

"I love it when you say that." He approached with a swagger and a saucy wink, "would you care to come with me?" He pulled out his screwdriver and opened her cell door.

"I'm not going to spend much time in here, am I?"

"Only to sleep." He held out his hand to her, her vortex manipulator sitting in his palm. She took it gratefully, secured it to her wrist, then laced her fingers with his. "Come along, then! Just keep in mind what I said about your journal. We won't be linear after this. I'll pop by when it's safe, but younger me spends a lot of time here, too."

She just smiled at him, soaking up his presence. She knew this would be tough. With their timelines running in reverse, there was sure to come a time when he didn't know this face. What would happen then, she didn't know. She wouldn't worry about that now. For now, she had his love.

ooOO00OOoo

It was an experience, seeing him out of order like this. Rarely did she meet the him that knew her true identity. She always knew when it was him, though. He could cup her face in his hands, kiss her sweetly, then whisper, «Bad Wolf, I love you.» Everytime. Everytime he told her he loved her, as if making up for all the time spent apart.

She loved all the time she spent with him. Every moment. Even those adventures with a him that didn't quite trust her were fun, if only to look on in amusement as he showed off for her without wanting to admit that was what he was doing. Years passed, and her diary filled with adventures with him. Jim the fish, the Pandorica, the Crash of the Byzantium. She felt like she was writing a story, almost. The story of their lives and adventures.

She revisited his death at Lake Silencio, this time as an observer. Strange, at the time she'd not even known that there were people on the beach other than the Doctor. There were times when pretending was an absolute chore. When it was difficult not to kiss and touch him as she longed to do. But most of the time it was just fun. They flitted and flirted - he always responded to her before pausing to stare at her out of the corner of her eye as if wondering how she was able to pull such responses out of him. She enjoyed those moments the most.

Amy and Rory were there, as promised. She saw them all over their timelines. Sometimes they were married, sometimes they weren't. Sometimes Rory was around, sometimes he wasn't. There was a separate segment in the back she devoted just to them so she could keep track of what was going on with them. It was hideously complicated and she loved every minute of it.

Visits from future him became less and less frequent as the years rolled by, while the past versions seemed to know nothing of her but her name. The end, whatever it would be, was approaching.

ooOO00OOoo

Her sentence was finally up. Two hundred years of Stormcage had flown by so much faster than she'd ever thought it would. Of course, it helped that she spent maybe half of that time actually in her cell. Otherwise, she was either off on an adventure with him, or doing things that shortened her sentence. Community service had never been so much fun.

She stepped out from the transport into the sun and shaded her eyes, searching for the blue box she knew would be waiting for her. Sure enough, there it was, just in front of the apartment he'd kept current for her, with the man himself leaning against it in his nicest tuxedo with such a casual air she just had to laugh at him. He just thought he was so impressive. "Hello, Sweetie. Nice haircut. We going somewhere fun?"

"Always." He leaned down, cupping her face in his hands.

She made a happy sound in the back of her throat. She knew what was coming next.

He placed a light kiss on her lips. «Bad Wolf, I love you.»

She sighed and wrapped her arms around him. She hadn't seen this him in over thirty years. «Doctor, I love you.»

He snapped his fingers and the doors opened. She giggled and swept inside as he dipped into a gallant bow. "My lady."

"Whew!" she said, depositing her small bag of items inside the nearest hallway. "I am glad that's over."

He sent them into the vortex and then danced towards her, catching her up in his arms and twirling her about the console.

"Today, my dear, we are going to the Singing Towers of Darillium, in celebration of your release."

She gasped in pleasant surprise. "Finally! You've been promising for ages."

He grinned and danced them out of the console room and down the hallway towards the wardrobe room. Their laughter echoed down the hallways as they reveled in the joy of being together again. He gave her one final spin before bending over her hand; then ruined the effect by smacking a wet and sloppy kiss down on the back it.

She laughed again before extracting her hand, giving him a flirtatious wink and sailing away to pick out a dress.

He kept up his happy exuberance until he was well away from her. Then his mask fell, revealing the fear he kept buried underneath. From his pocket he pulled a very specific screwdriver. He studied it for one long moment before putting it away. "I really hope this works," he mumbled.


	27. Chapter 26

"Doctor!" River called, giving a little twirl as she entered the console room. "How do I look?"

He turned to face her, a smile instantly blooming on his face. "Beautiful! Magnificent! Absolutely gorgeous!"

"All right, ladykiller," she laughed. "No need to overdo it."

They met at the door and he offered her his arm. He led her towards an expensive restaurant, where a waiter greeted them by name, leading them to an intimate table on the balcony where they could feel the warm breeze blow and listen to the towers sing.

He pulled her chair out before taking a seat himself.

"So romantic! I remember a time when you would have run to the other side of the Vortex before you'd share a meal with me like this," she teased.

"Yes, well. I remember a time when I was too stupid and stubborn to admit how much you mean to me," he responded.

She opened her menu and brought it up to hide the grin his words inspired. Two hundred years with him, and she still sometimes found it hard to believe that he would actually say such things to her.

They were silent for a while, studying their menus as she cast about for something to say. She still hadn't reached the end of her loop, yet. That would happen when she met a Doctor that didn't know her face. An idea that was frankly terrifying. What would happen then? What made the cycle end? She worried that it would mean her death.

She thrust such thoughts away and searched for something to say. "I think I'm going to go back and get my doctorate, now that I'm finally out."

He peered at her from over the top of his menu. "Oh?"

"I think the TARDIS needs more than one Doctor, don't you?" she asked with a saucy wink.

He chuckled and lowered his menu. The two of them placed their orders for food and wine, sitting in comfortable silence until the waiter returned and filled their glasses.

"To us," River said, lifting the wine in a toast.

"Stuff of Legend," he finished, tapping his glass against hers.

"So, you told me about Donna and all that happened with her, but you never told me where she went."

"I didn't, did I?" He shifted in his seat, sliding into teaching mode, and she settled down to listen. "We had this one trip where she met this man. Lee. She said he was the perfect man."

"Love at first sight?"

He winked. "It takes some people that way. But Donna, being Donna, wouldn't stay with him when I offered it. Said she wouldn't leave me alone." His gaze turned fond and far away. "Couldn't ask for a better mate than Donna. She kept me in my place. Never let me go too far."

"She sounds like a wonderful woman."

"She is. The best."

"And you only take the best."

"Absolutely!" They grinned at each other like a pair of cheshire cats before he continued. "I wasn't going to let her miss out on love to be with me. I couldn't do that to her." He gave River a significant look. "I know what it is like to have loved and lost. I wouldn't let her go through the same thing."

River smiled kindly. "Quite right, too."

He grimaced lightly. She'd already forgiven him for that bit of foolishness, but the reference still stung. "So I made this habit. We would go somewhere, then I'd stop by Lee's time." He feigned enthusiasm, putting on the London accent of his former incarnation. "Oh, look! It's Lee! Let's go say hi." He widened his eyes into overblown sincerity. "I don't know why we keep ending up here, Donna. Maybe Lee has a temporal magnet on him. Perhaps you should check him out."

It was said with such sincere concern and worry that it took River several long moments to process what he'd just said. "You didn't!"

"I did." Smug. So smug.

"Tell me she didn't believe you."

"Oh, not the tiniest bit. She's far too good to fall for my innocent act." He ignored River's,"I'll be sure to tell her that" and continued on. "What was she going to do? She could hardly stop me. And she _does_ love Lee."

River shook her head in admiration. "The Doctor: Time Lord. Stuff of Legend. Matchmaker."

He grinned.

The waiter returned with their food, and the Doctor began to regale her with tales from his time with Donna. The spent most of the meal that way until he mentioned the time he'd gone to see Donna in this body, _without_ warning her that he could regenerate.

"...and then she slapped me!" he finished, affronted.

"Seems to happen to you a lot, Sweetie." River laughed.

"I wish it wouldn't."

Their waiter approached again and cleared their plates, replacing them with delicate viewing instruments.

"Opera glasses?" River guessed, picking one up to study.

"Basically."

They turned to face the towers, bringing their chairs close together and raising their glasses to view the tall edifices in the distance. From this far away, and without the glasses, the singing towers looked like nothing so much as an unusual grouping of rock formations, spaced about on either side of a large chasm. But with the glasses, it was possible to tell that the towers were actually the outside of massive burrows, the sides riddled with holes. As the sun set, movement could be detected, and the lower the sun, the more the things moved until the first of them crept slowly out into the diminishing light. Ugly, gangly things with oversized jaws and heads, they shuffled awkwardly out to sit, hunched over, in little clumps on stone ledges.

The last sliver of the sun sank below the horizon and a hush settled over their fellow diners. Then, from one of the groups in the middle of a tower on the right, a low warble rose. It fluttered on the wind, weak and ephemeral as the breeze that brought it to the listener's ears. It struggled valiantly to rise above the oppressive silence, but it faded away in the end. It seemed like the whole world was holding its breath.

Then, from a tower on the left, came the answer. This one was higher, thinner, more confident. It danced across the gap between the towers and River could see the occupants stirring under its sound.

The low warble returned, twining in and around the high note. The two braided together into a lovely melody, each sound distinctly distinguishable, even as the union swelled in strength and power. From the left and right, figures detached themselves from their towers; hurling themselves into the open air between their respective roosts, they sang even as they fell.

River gasped and reached out, tightly grasping the Doctor's fingers. She turned to grin brilliantly at him, but the smile faded when she saw that he was silently crying. "Doctor?" She asked in concern. "Are you all right?"

He hummed at her, but otherwise only returned the gesture.

She stared at him for a moment longer, understanding that he wasn't willing to talk about it, then turned her attention to the singers again.

The two figures fell, singing rapturously, until at some invisible signal, they twisted in midair; leathery flaps of skin emerged and caught the wind, altering their descent into a graceful curve in flight together.

As if that was what they had all been waiting for, each of the creatures on the far off towers tilted their heads back, raising their voices in song. Despite distance and the myriad of voices, it seemed to River that all she had to do was concentrate, and she was able to hear individual voices, even as she retained the ability to appreciate the whole.

She looked over at him, eyes wide with wonder. He smiled and leaned over; she met him halfway so he could whisper in her ear. "The veniersee female lays eggs at the top of the towers. When they hatch, they are genderless and weak. They make their way down into the interior of the towers. Each one is like a little ecosystem with a fully developed food chain, life cycles, diseases, you name it. The live and grow inside this ecosystem, never going out onto the ledges or seeing the sun. Diet determines gender, and since the towers are self-contained..."

"Each one only has one gender. Male tower, female tower."

"Exactly. They never see a member of the opposite sex. Until, all at once, their instincts send them out onto the ledges to sing for their mates."

"They fly," River said in a hushed whisper. "They spend the first part of their lives in the darkness. Never seeing the sun, never flying, never knowing what their wings are _for_. Then they come out of the darkness into the setting sun and sing. And they are lonely and scared and they don't know what they are doing or why, but they sing anyway."

"And then," the Doctor said, picking up the story, "from across the chasm, someone answers. Someone who is just as lost and confused and lonely as they are. The sing together, comforting each other, and for a little while it is enough. But soon they have to meet this other being, have to _see_ the one that holds the loneliness at bay."

"And they fall," River said, no longer talking about the singers.

"And they fall," the Doctor agreed quietly. "How could they not? They've finally met someone who helped make sense of the madness their world had become. And, together..." he trailed off, gesturing at the sky which was now filled with pairs of veniersee, kiting gracefully. The ledges were empty and the heavens were full of song.

"They fly." River's voice was thick with emotion and her eyes shone.

"Mmm. Individually, they lack the courage. But together, they can do it."

They sat in silence, listening and watching as the darkness slowly descended over the world. Eventually, it became too dark for River to be able to see them, though from his eyes, she could tell that the Doctor still could.

He glanced over at her, his smile full of love, and leaned over to whisper in her ear again. "The veniersee mate for life, you know?"

She had her eyes closed, reveling in the music, and answered with a half-minded, "Oh?"

"Yes." Quietly emphatic. Then, "River Song, will you marry me?"


	28. Chapter 27

She froze as his words bounced around in her mind. _Marry me? Marry me? Marry me?_ She touched them. Tasted them. Analyzed them for any hint of a joke or alternate meaning. Was there some sort of problem and he was speaking in code? But no. His voice had been serious, but calm. She turned her head slowly to stare at him, her mouth partially open in surprise.

He looked her in the eyes...and dropped his mental shields. No, not dropped them so much as, made her the exception. He incorporated her into them in such a way that they did not even register her presence. For everyone else, they were as strong as ever. But for her and her alone he allowed himself to be vulnerable. He looked at her, mental arms outstretched in welcome. How could she refuse?

She slid forward, mentally and physically, nestling into him. It was so much more than coming home. They'd fought and struggled so much to get where they were now. But even now she wouldn't have traded it for the world. She was still frightened of the future -

Enveloped in his mind as she was, he could easily follow the trail of her thoughts. He caught the tail end of it and smoothed it down, telling her wordlessly that she should live in the moment and let tomorrow take care of itself.

She sighed, and he hugged her tighter, his mind sliding along hers in a caress. She sighed again and he chuckled, pressing a kiss to her hair. ::I'll take that as a yes.::

"Wha-?" She tried to remember what he'd asked her through the bliss. "Oh!" She hadn't answered him! ::Yes! Of course, absolutely yes!::

He cupped her jaw, tilting her head so he could kiss her. His tongue flicked out along the seam of her lips and she opened for him, incorporating him into her own shields as he shuddered in her arms.

He kissed her deeply before pulling back, panting slightly. "Shameless, River Song," he said, his voice husky, and she thrilled at the sound. "Let's go before we scandalize anyone further."

It was only at his words that she became aware of the disapproval and embarrassment being aimed their way by the other patrons. Their displeasure pricked her shields as the Doctor dropped money on the table and gently guided her back to the TARDIS.

She should be ashamed, she knew that. What he'd done was a verbal proposal of marriage, paired with a mental vow of devotion. Her response had been more than a little extreme. Sliding into him like that was wanton, but excusable given the circumstances. But incorporating him into her shields after he had just done so was akin to ripping his clothes off and having her way with him then and there. The reciprocity had joined them intimately - and to do so in public! Well. She _should_ be embarrassed. But all she felt was overwhelming joy.

"How do you..." she made vague hand gestures. "Time Lords, I mean. Seems like you had a ceremony for everything."

"Mm. Pretty much. Give me a hand?"

She stepped up to the console and helped him pilot the TARDIS through the vortex, though he kept their destination hidden from her. At the end of the trip he did...something. There were a series of levers that should have caused them to drop out of the vortex into nothingness.

"Doctor?" she asked with a slight amount of alarm. "Where are we?"

He gave her his mad grin and dashed past her, down the ramp to stand, back to the doors, with his hands behind his back.

"Doctor..." she walked slowly down the ramp towards him, not trusting that look in his eyes.

"Welcome, River Song," he said, pulling the doors open as he stepped away from them, his eyes on her to catch her reaction. "Welcome, to Gallifrey."

He stepped completely out of the way and her hands flew to her mouth as she took in the sight beyond the doors of the TARDIS.

Calf high red grass swayed in the soft morning breeze of a rising sun, birdsong filtered in through the silver branches of the trees in a nearby forest, and beyond the white cliffs the TARDIS sat on, the ocean shone the most remarkable blue.

She stepped carefully out onto this amazing world, one hand gripping the doorway tightly as if to be sure of something real. River was barely aware of the sound of laces through eyelets as behind her the Doctor shucked his shoes and socks.

He exited in bare feet and knelt, gently urged her to shift her weight so he could slip her shoes off and drop them inside the doors. Standing, he caught up her free hand, laced their fingers, and led her gently out of the shadow of the TARDIS to stand in the open under the burnt orange sky.

"Doctor..." her mouth worked as she tried and failed to find words to describe what she saw. Rapturous, exquisite, perfect, sublime. Her mind babbled, each word inspected and then dismissed for not being...having...enough _muchness. _She was making no sense and she didn't care. She turned to the Doctor to find him gazing at her with the same sense of awe and wonder with which she viewed his homeworld. "How?" she asked, when she finally found her voice.

"Parallel world."

And she understood. This was the Gallifrey of Pete's World. The home of the Time Lords, but empty of his people. She stepped up to him and he wrapped her in his arms, holding her tightly. "I always wanted to show you this place," he whispered.

"Well then," she said, stepping back and lacing their fingers with a cheeky smile that brought up memories of their time together long ago. "Lead on, Mr. Impressive."

ooOO00OOoo

They stood together under the shining silver leaves of an ancient _annielo_ tree and exchanged vows. It was just the two of them. No family or friends to stand with them and wish them well, but that was how they wanted it. Just the two of them against the universe, as it always had been.

Their toes dug into the red, red grass and around their wrists in a complicated know that seemed to exist in more than the typical three dimensions a brilliantly embroidered cloth was wound. The ends of the cloth folded over their hands, obscuring their fingers. Over his, the name Bad Wolf was written in circular script while over hers, was his true name. For all her mastery of his tongue, she could not read it. The meaning behind the intricate curves eluded her. But, he promised that she would know it soon enough.

"River Song," he began, his voice solemn. "I stand before you with my hearts and mind open. I know that I am not worthy of you, but I offer myself just the same. To bind our houses, to bind our hearts. I offer you a hand to hold and a home to share. And if you accept, I offer you the last secret I have: my name."

"Doctor," she said, barely able to speak for the joy bubbling over. "I stand before you with my heart and mind open. I give them freely, knowing that they are safe within your keeping. I offer myself, to bind our houses and our hearts. I will hold your hand and run with you through the stars. I accept the gift of your name, and offer mine in exchange."

He quirked a smile at her and took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he was about to do. He leaned forward, his lips close to her ear, and whispered a word in his ancient chiming language.

The word, she found, was not that important. She'd heard its translation before in the course of his technobabble. No, what was important was the meaning, the _weight_ given to the word when said in his language.

There was a force, a power, an invisible energy threaded throughout the universe. It was unaffected by gravity; light couldn't touch it. Untamable, untouchable, undetectable except for the few who knew how and when and where to look, the force nevertheless existed. It was the invisible strings that tied the universe together; it spun the galaxies and burned in the heart of every star. More than light, more than heat and air, more than water and gravity itself; _this_ was the force that held it all together, that allowed life to bloom and thrive.

And it was him.

She shivered with the enormity of the revelation that was no revelation at all. For hadn't she always known these things about him? She looked into his eyes and saw the utter _truth_ of his name in them. But she saw something else there, as well. For all his unfathomable knowledge and power, for all the lives he held in the palm of his hand, vulnerable to his will, he was also - always and forever - a Doctor. Her Doctor.

He leaned forward, put her lips to his ear, and whispered her true name to him. «Bad Wolf.»

Much as she had done, he shivered as the force of her words hit him. He already knew her name. Knew and understood the meaning of it. Even so, he was awed all over again that the Goddess of Time loved _him_.

They kissed, once more incorporating each other into their shields; this time in a much more permanent way.

«Bad Wolf, I love you.» he breathed as he pulled away.

For the first time in her life, she was able to respond in kind. She said that word, the one that was so intrinsically _him._ Then, «I love you.»

His smile was more brilliant than the suns above them.


	29. Chapter 28

She did eventually go back for her doctorate, and when she was feeling lonely or frustrated, she would pull out the sonic screwdriver he'd given her as a wedding present. She'd turn it over and over, learning its dips and grooves while she studied. She found the red setting, clever man, and generally fiddled with it until she could use it just as well as she could use his. It only took her another year to get her degree, she had studied a lot while she was in prison. (Contrary to his initial claims, she did have to spend at least half her time there. If she'd left for more than that, they would have extended her stay because she was 'escaping'.) But in that year's time, she heard nothing from him. Any him. She was concerned, but not overly so. On the day she graduated, she saw him standing in the back, cheering for her.

She was making her way over to him when she was intercepted by the Dean of Archaeology. On a whim, she'd applied for the new teaching position that had opened up at the university, unsure as to when the Doctor would return for her. That he would, she had no doubt. But his driving could be somewhat...erratic, at times. The Dean was asking her to come in for an interview.

She leaned to the side to catch a glimpse of the Doctor. He smiled, and nodded. She turned back to Dean. "I'd love to."

She got the job, but she'd rather known she would. It helped that her husband had a form of precognition. She taught for a year, enjoying the opportunity to have people call her 'professor'. But her husband never showed up. And neither did his younger self. It had been two years. What did it take to end the cycle?

She was sipping tea in a small shop when she was approached by a man who wanted her to lead an expedition to the Library. He'd gotten a really good reference for her from a Doctor Smith. Finally! Some news. She smiled wolfishly, and the man took a step backwards. To the Library.

She sent him a message through the Vortex as she'd done several times before, asking him to meet her there. She was going to see her husband again after two years! The thought made her heart beat faster.

ooOO00OOoo

It was _him_. Rude and not ginger with great hair and pinstripes. She'd never thought the circle would take her so far into his past. She was thrilled to see him again. And calling him pretty boy - well, that had been pure mischief. She hadn't been able to resist, thinking of what his previous self would have said upon seeing what he would turn into. But the joy was tempered with sorrow, because _he_ didn't know _her. _He'd never seen this face.

This - this was the end.

ooOO00OOOo

He didn't trust her. Was wary and rude and argued with everything she said. She would scan something with her screwdriver and he would scan it as well, seeming unwilling to trust her with something so small.

The last time she'd seen this body she had confessed her love to it while he had stared at her with love and grief. Now, he looked right through her, like she was a bug on a slide. And oh, but it hurt.

ooOO00OOoo

Donna vanished and he was frantic. She wished that she could tell him that it would be fine, that Donna would find her Lee, but she couldn't be sure. She knew that one wrong word could send it all crashing down.

It had ever been that way.

Then came the Vashta Nerada in spacesuits. Then Donna's face on the info terminal. She had to do something. The Vashta Nerada were closing in and he was spending all his time investigating her. He needed to trust her, but what could she do? She'd slipped up and made him suspicious. And there was no going back now. There was only one thing she could think of. Only one way to earn his trust quickly. She closed her eyes. Oh, but it would hurt him. This soon after he'd found out about her death, he would still be grieving. She didn't want to do this. She opened her eyes and found him standing before her, full of wrath.

"I'm not going to ask you again," he thundered. "Who are you?"

"I'm someone that you are one day going to trust implicitly. And I'm sorry, Doctor, I really am. But we don't have time for you to figure that out." She slid towards him and he tensed. "I'm going to whisper something in your ear."

He narrowed his eyes but gave a short, sharp nod and she stepped up to him, resisting the urge to sink into him the way she once would have. She got so close that her lips brushed his ear, and she spoke as quietly as she could, unwilling that anyone else should hear the secret she was about to utter. She whispered his name in the language of his people; breathed the word that spun the galaxies - and heard his sharp intake of breath.

She stepped back and eyed him cautiously, unsure of how he would react. "Are we good, Doctor?" she asked when he only stared at her. _"Are we good?"_

"Y-" he swallowed hard. "Yes. We're good."

"Good."

And then he fled from her.

He avoided her like she had the plague after that, though she caught him staring at her more than once. The whole thing made her more than a little sad. A crisis point was rushing up to meet them, and she was becoming ever more certain that she already knew how it would end.

It was while he was wiring up the machine that she finally understood. Her fears had been right all along. She was going to die here, without ever having seen her husband's smile ever again.

She argued with him for the sake of appearances, knowing it wouldn't do anything to change his mind - or hers. She _would not_ let him go through with it. She smiled sadly as he put the last of it together. She would die for him, again. Because she wanted him safe.

ooOO00OOoo

He came to with a minute left on the count down and immediately began his bluster and blow.

"No! River, stop! You can't survive that much energy flowing through your mind!"

"Neither can you, my love. You'll burn out too fast, never get a chance to regenerate. I won't let that happen."

"River, no. River..." he pleaded with her, his eyes wide with sorrow.

She hated what she was doing to him. Hated the pain of dying without seeing him again. But it had all been worth it.

"River, you know my _name_. My name! I can't even say it except..." he licked his lips. "How can you know my name?" he struggled against the handcuffs keeping him tethered to the pole, stretched to get his screwdriver which she'd laid just out of range. "River!"

"Shh..." she said, voice shaky as she fought off the tears. "Spoilers." She paused to fiddle the wires into a better position. "The last time I saw the older you, he showed up on my doorstep with a new haircut and suit. You looked so dashing." She smiled through her unshed tears. "You took me to the singing towers of Darillium. You'd been promising for ages." She took a shuddering breath, focused her eyes on the Doctor she'd chained to the post. "You cried. Wouldn't tell me why...but this means that you've always known how it would end. Oh, my Doctor. I'm so sorry. But don't worry. Because you'll see me again." She took a deep breath, wishing for all the things she wanted to say to him, but couldn't for the future he'd yet to live. "You'll see me, and we'll be fantastic. We'll run..." she trailed off, lost for a moment in fond memories of things she'd lived and he'd yet to see. Then she focused back on him. If this was to be her end, she was so glad that he was there with her. Even if he didn't know it yet, he loved her - and she loved him. Her Doctor. "You just watch us run." A single tear trickled down her cheek.

The timer clicked over to zero, and she brought the two ends of the device together, completing the circuit. The energy began to flow, she felt a sharp burst of pain and then, no more.


	30. Epilogue

River opened her eyes and stared around, unsure as to where she was or how she'd ended up there. She was in a white room that seemed to go on without end, and she was wearing an unusual, flowing white dress. It took her a while, but then the pieces slowly came together. "Oh, that man. He just doesn't ever give up."

"Never ever."

She whirled in place to find him lounging in the doorway to the zero room, his stupid, smug smile firmly in place. "Oh, you! You think you're so impressive."

"I _am_ so impressive!"

She grinned and he strode into the room to sweep her into his arms and kiss her breathless.

When he set her down an eternity later, she was no longer certain which direction was up. "You brilliant man! How did you do it? Was it the screwdriver?"

"That _is_ the most logical assumption, and also what my younger self thinks. Inaccurate, though. It was a red herring. Which reminds me: these are for you." From inside his pockets, he produced her journal and her screwdriver, placing both back into her hands. She looked up at him and he winked. "Still haven't peeked."

She hugged them to her chest. "How?"

"How did I avoid your death? The same way I avoided my own."

"...you used a tesseract? Shouldn't I remember being a tiny person in a robot?"

"What? No. River, what are you talking about? I used a remote-controlled avatar. Kept you safe here on the TARDIS while I translated the signal through the Vortex to your double. Mind you, it took me almost ten years to build your doppelganger. Had to get everything perfect so that neither younger me, nor you, knew there'd been a switch. Very difficult, fooling Time Lord senses. Had to account for fluctuations in body temperature due to emotion, the release of various hormones into the air, the texture and sensitivity of flesh, as well as the minute changes that occur to the face as it flexes with each expression. And _then_ I had to be sure that it didn't weigh any more than you would, that it could process food and water properly... And when I was done with all that, I had to set up the proper channels in the head to direct the flow of energy so that the transfer of people from CAL back into corporeal form worked. That's how I figured it out in the first place. Younger me is running - I'm good at that - because he doesn't know how to handle the whammy of a secret you threw at him. But later, once I knew exactly who River Song was, I started thinking. A full Time Lord brain would have been able to handle the influx of energy and would have had enough storage to accommodate the load for a short while before it shorted out. But a human mind, even augmented by the Vortex, would not have been able to. You," he kissed her briefly but thoroughly, "would not have been successful at it. Thus, it wasn't you." He grinned, smug-proud. "So I built you a double that _would_ be able to bear the load. Hideously difficult. Might have used Time Lord science to cheat."

"Bigger on the inside?"

"Exactly."

"I see." She paused, "and when did this switch occur?"

He had the grace to look abashed. "On our wedding night. After you fell asleep."

"You married me, switched me with a robot, and left me alone for _two years_?" she stepped towards him and he backed up, his hands up defensively.

"N-now, River. Just hold on a minute!" his eyes were wide.

She rather enjoyed being able to elicit this reaction out of the most powerful man she'd ever met.

"I _had_ to," he almost pleaded. "I know it was two years, and I really am sorry about that. But it was literally the _only_ time where the timelines were weak enough - or strong enough, depending on how you think of it - to support the substitution. And!" he continued hastily when that obviously wasn't enough to mollify her, "I had to stay in the Vortex the whole time! I couldn't have you jumping to other times and risk losing the signal to your double. So I kept you safe in the Zero Room here, and kept the TARDIS in the Vortex, where she could send the signal wherever you decided to travel. I've spent the last two years that you were getting your doctorate and then teaching watching you from the Vortex. I've been just as lonely for you as you were for me, I assure you."

She came even closer, wrapped her arms around him, and lay her head on his chest. "You better have been."

He made a happy sound and draped his arms around her, kissing her head. "I was. I promise. Having your unconscious body here is not the same as having you in it."

They stood there a long moment before she reached up and adjusted his bowtie. "Oh, but you are a clever man." She kissed him delicately and he looked distinctly relieved. "Is this it, then? Is the circle complete?"

"It's complete. We're linear again."

"Well then, Doctor. I'd like to visit the Tylers, if you please."

He stepped back and gestured for her to proceed him out the room. "River Song, your wish is my command."

ooOO00OOoo

A little over six months after the Doctor's last visit, his blue box once more materialized on the front lawn of the Tyler mansion.

As the Doctor and River approached the door hand in hand, they could hear voices from inside the building.

"Was that the TARDIS?" Jackie said. "What's himself doing here so early? Tony, be a dear and get the door, would you? I hate it when he sonics my lock."

They heard footsteps approach and the two of them shared a quick fierce grin. The door opened to reveal a young twenty-something man with unruly brown hair and a mischievous grin. Hey eyes widened as he took in the Doctor standing there with River. "Mum! It's the Doctor!" he yelled in the manner of college students everywhere, still staring at River. "And he brought a woman!"

"Did he now? It's about time!"

"Hi." The young man stuck his hand out to River, "my name is Tony Tyler."

River let go of the Doctor's hand to shake Tony's, hiding her amusement. "Nice to meet you. I'm River Song."

"C'mon in. Mum'll have tea on." Tony closed the door behind them and then led the way down the hallway.

River took in the festive garland and lights strewn about the house. "What day is it?" she asked with a suspicious glance at the Doctor, who was maintaining a determinedly innocent air.

"Christmas eve. Mum's surprised because he," Tony jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the Doctor, "usually shows up for dinner day-of. You're a day early."

"Early. Right."

"Here they are, Mum." Tony said, stepping into a spacious kitchen full of fantastic smells. "This is River Song."

Jackie Tyler turned away from the stove, towel in hand. Her hair had mostly gone to silver, and there were more lines on her face. But the silver made her look dignified and the lines were born of laughter. River's face remained pleasant even as her heart clenched. This was her mother, healthy and happy with her new husband and child. Over all the years she'd been gone, the Doctor had looked after them. She poured all her love and gratitude into the connection she had with him then squeezed his hand, let go, and offer Jackie a handshake.

"Hello, Mrs. Tyler," she said, proud of how steady her voice was. "It's nice to meet you. Is your husband around?"

Jackie reached out and took her daughter's hand. "Jackie, please, if I can call you River. And Pete's just upstairs. He'll be along in a minute." She stepped past River to give the Doctor a hug and kiss on the cheek. "Been telling tales, have we?"

"Hello, Jackie," the Doctor returned.

"Jacks? Is that the Doctor?" Footsteps down the stairs and a male voice, it had to be Pete.

"In the kitchen!" Jackie called. "Have a seat," she said talking to the Doctor and River. "I'll bring you some tea."

Jackie poured the tea, Pete came into the kitchen, and introductions were made again. River ended up offering to help Jackie cook and the two of them moved in and around each other, talking and laughing like old friends.

The Doctor leaned back and sipped his tea, his eyes tracking River with lazy contentment.

"You love her," Pete observed after a while.

"What?" the Doctor started. "Oh, yes. I do."

Pete and Tony stared.

"You tell _her_ that?" Tony asked. He'd grown up hearing about Bad Wolf Bay and _'Quite right, too.'_

The Doctor rolled his eyes. _"Yes,_ I've told my wife that I love her."

"Your wife?"

"Your _wife?"_

"His what!"

This last was Jackie, having caught only her husband and son's incredulous exclamations.

"Oh, Sweetie, really?" River sighed. "Did you have to?"

"What?" The Doctor said with blank incomprehension while they Tylers mouthed _'Sweetie?'_ to each other. "You said you wanted them to know."

River shook her head, kissed him lightly to the shock of everyone, and turned to Jackie. "Let's set the table. Then I'll explain."

ooOO00OOoo

They must have talked for hours, trying to explain the intricate back and forth that had been their lives since he'd found his way to Pete's World and she'd been stolen. The Tylers were incredulous at first, but River had no shortage of memories with which to prove her identity. Once it sank in that River was indeed Rose, the tears started. Jackie clung to the Doctor and River in equal measure, sobbing her gratitude to him and babbling about how much 'her baby' had grown.

It was just bad luck that Jackie remembered his last visit with them while she was stuck to his chest. "You!" she yelled, her head snapping up to glare at him.

Watching the fear race over the Doctor's face was one of the funniest things River had ever seen, and she was hard pressed to stifle her laughter.

"Now, wait - Jackie. Wait a moment!" The Doctor brought up his hands and tried to back away. But she clenched her fists in his shirt, unwilling to allow him to escape.

"You've known River for years! You've talked about her! How long have you known she was my Rose?" she demanded.

"Jackie - "

"How long? She was alive, you knew she was alive, and you never said!"

The Doctor stared over Jackie's head at River in panic, begging her to save him.

River shook her head, muttered something about, "Oncoming Storm," under her breath, and approached, putting her hands on Jackie's shoulders. "Mum, stop. You're scaring my husband. He couldn't tell you. What if something about it changed? Time is in flux, we've told you that before. It would have gotten your hopes up for nothing, and - why are you looking at me like that?"

"You called me Mum!"

ooOO00OOoo

The Doctor and River laid on their backs on the red grass of Gallifrey, the orange sky slowly sliding into red as the suns sank below the horizon.

"Doctor?" River asked into the quiet, as the world around them began to settle in for the night.

"Hmm?"

"I've been thinking. About what you said about Time Lord names."

"Mmm."

She smiled and shifted position until her head was pillowed on his shoulder, his small grunts as she elbowed him ignored. "Well. I think you're right. Changing names isn't the best idea."

"Of course. I'm always right."

She elbowed him in the ribs. "I never expected it, but I really like being called Rose by Mum. Having Pete and Tony there again...he's grown so much."

The Doctor turned his head and kissed her on her temple.

"What if I went back to being Rose again? Would you mind?" she asked in a small voice.

"I don't care what you want to call yourself. I already know who you are." The Doctor rolled over and took her into his arms, their faces close together. «Bad Wolf,» he breathed.

She shivered in recognition and they shared a lingering kiss.

He stared at her, eyes gleaming. "Rose?"

She smiled, that tongue-touched smile from lifetimes ago. "Rose."

He kissed her again before rolling over onto his back again, holding her close. "What if we settled here a while?" he asked, voice filled with drowsy contentment.

"Hmm?"

"Well, I'm getting tired of running, and -"

"And Gallifrey is a beautiful planet."

"And - yes. Gallifrey is beautiful," he agreed. "It's just...I never really appreciated it while it was here. And I collected all these recipes for food and designs for clothing and architecture, and..." he was fidgeting about nervously the longer he talked.

Rose put a calming hand over his and his rambling slowed to a stop. "I think it's a wonderful idea. I could do with some peace as well. We'll stay here, build you a slice of home. And when we get antsy, we can alway start running again. Because it will still be here when we get back."

He stared at her, overwhelmed with love. "How long are you going to stay with me?" he asked, voice tremulous.

Bad Wolf smiled, her eyes flashing gold. "Forever."

And she did.

The End

ooOO00OOoo

Author's Note: Well. I hope you enjoyed the story. I certainly enjoyed writing it.


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